HealthyGamerGG - Dr. K Breaks Down The Science of Flirting

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K explores the science of flirting and romantic connection, revealing why most people find it so frustrating and inconsistent. He breaks down the psychological theory of play, the five distinct styles of flirting, and why maintaining plausible deniability is the most vital feature of any romantic interaction. What to expect in this episode: The Plausible Deniability Rule: Understanding why flirting is intentionally designed to be ambiguous to maintain social safety and avoid being perceived as "creepy". The Detection Gap: A look at research showing that humans are 84% accurate at sensing a lack of interest, but only correctly identify flirting 28% of the time. Five Styles of Flirting: A breakdown of the Traditional, Physical, Sincere, Playful, and Polite archetypes and how to identify which style you and your partner prefer. Hygiene vs. Genetics: Why scientific data suggests that bad hygiene and a "slimy" approach are far more significant deal breakers than having "poor looks". The Power of Awkwardness: Why showing embarrassment after a rejection is actually a positive empathic signal that proves you respect boundaries and care about the other person. Negativity Bias in Dating: How low self-esteem creates a filter that causes you to interpret 70% of ambiguous signals as negative, leading to a cycle of perceived failure. Neurodivergence and Ambiguity: Why those on the autism spectrum struggle with flirting due to its reliance on non-verbal "theory of mind" rather than rigid, logical rules. The Sequence of Flirting: A deep dive into how signaling availability often serves as the necessary first step before a successful approach can happen. Introducing the HG AI Tool: A first look at the new alpha-test AI trained on years of Healthy Gamer content to help you find tailored answers to complex mental health questions. Dr. K's NEW Guide to Love, Sex, & Relationships is here! Order now: https://bit.ly/4dO3x0VHG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Alo Kanoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Welcome to another Healthy Gamer Gigi's stream. My name is Dr. Aolo Kanoja. Just a reminder that everything we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken for educational and entertainment purposes. only, nothing is intended to be taken as medical advice. So if you'll have a concern, a medical concern or question, please see a licensed professional. Sorry, guys.

We had started lagging, so we had to restart everything. So I apologize for that. But we've got a hype stream today for realsies. Let me do this. So I have to like open everything up again. So give me a second chat. Okay. And we're trying to reset our chat link.

Okay, let's do, let me just make sure this is all set up. Okay, I'm gonna just open chat real quick and then we will be, we'll be good to go. I just want to make sure that I'm streaming. I can see Twitch chat. Okay, there we go. Okay, dude, today's stream is gonna be great. This is gonna be so good. Love this so much.

Okay, I'm not lagging, right? No lag. Okay, I don't see lag. I don't see lag. That means I'm not lagging. Okay. So, if I don't see it, it's not happening. All right. We got a couple of quick announcements before we get to it.

Okay, so today, this is going to be great. We are going to talk about the science of flirting. So we have this thing, you know, guide to love sex and relationships with which we released. There's already been about 6,600 sales. I just want to show you all real quick what our next target is. So, by the way, this is why we, you know, build things. So 3,000 is the cost to build the guide. 4,000 allows us to do more stuff on stream.

5,000 is going to, I guess I'm becoming a V-tuber. That's news to me. 6,000, we want to start publishing in academic journals. So we've been, you know, that's been funded. We're building a research infrastructure. And I guess I'm doing a workout stream. This is news to me, by the way. I don't know what these goals are.

7,000 is grow the HG Institute. So that's what we'd love to. get to. So the Healthy Gamer Institute is where we educate people like psychiatrists, therapists, about the problems that y'all struggle with. So a common complaint that we get is, you know, I went to see a therapist, but they weren't able to help me with my insert rejection sensitivity, my loneliness, I'm alone all the time, I'm struggling to meet. They're just like, why don't you just try the apps? So we're actually building curricula to educate therapists, psychiatrists, coaches so that their workforce is like more competent to help y'all with y'all's problems.

And then this is my dream. And, you know, people said a long time ago, like, y'all should build a mobile app. We didn't have a good reason to, TBH. I didn't see a good, like, reason to. But now we actually have some functionality, which you guys is already in the guide, by the way. So there's some cool stuff that we finally, I won't get into it now. but I think we've figured out how to help y'all in a more profound way. Basically, a lot of people will watch streams and YouTube videos, which we're grateful for

and we appreciate. But sometimes that isn't enough. And it's taken us about six years of coaching outcomes, content feedback, trying different kinds of content, running workshops to really figure out what we think would help you more. And now I think the best format is an app. So that's what we're trying to fund. Another thing. So before we get into the lecture,

we have our community challenge, which is going on right now, which is heart to heart, helps you get started, get honest, what are you wanting, how do you love, what do you get in given relationships,

set boundaries, be vulnerable, have the conversation, get closer, nurture connections and sharpen your social skills. and then, you know, it's going to end up with sort of a plan of how to move forward. So that's live right now. Y'all can join.

It's completely free. Okay? Yeah, so let's get started. Okay. This is so exciting. All right. So let me see if I have, let me see if I can find. A YouTube chat was busted.

Looks like it's TikTok. Okay. All right. So I'm going to tap into YouTube chat in a minute. But, okay. So today we're going to talk about flirting. And, you know, people are more lonely than they've ever been. And there's a bunch of online dating.

And as a psychiatrist, I try to help people with their mental health. And we have this channel where we try to help you all with their mental health. And so at some point, like, we sat down about a couple, about two years. years ago, we were like, okay, we got to figure out how to help people find relationships. So we dug into this whole thing, you know, for two years, we've been doing research, looking at all the literature, and then that kind of ended up as the guide to love sex relationships. And what I want to do is sort of share a deep dive of an example of a topic that we cover in the guide, okay?

So we're going to break down for you what the science of flirting is. How to flirt successfully. And the really fascinating thing in how to flirt unsuccessfully, why flirting is unsuccessful. And the really fascinating thing is that there's so much research on the topic which no one talks about. Okay. So. And then the other thing that's like really annoying is that there's a lot of bad advice out there. Right.

So a lot of people will say, this is how you meet men. how you meet women, right? And they'll speak definitively. But flirting is a complex thing. And there are like, there's sort of like a theory to it. So I would say that flirting is a lot like chess, where on the, on the internet, what we see right now is people are like, here's how you win a chess game. You do pawn to this and you do this, you do this opening and then you win. Okay. And then other people will say, here's how you win a chess game. You do this to this, to this, and then this is how you win. And then other people are like, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do, right? So they go play chess games, and then they do these openings, and then they get crushed, and they're like,

this doesn't work. And then this is what's really scary. Some people will go do those chess openings, and it does work. And they're like, here's what worked for me. And then what we get to is the advice that, okay, so the reason it works, right, because this is a big part of the advice, is people say, okay, you have to get rejected by 100 women. You've got to try this pickup line. You just got to keep trying it on people until it works. That's like playing. 100 games of chess with your static opening, and then eventually you'll win, right? Like you'll find some noob who doesn't know this like five move checkmate or whatever, and your opening will work.

Today, what we're going to teach you is the theory behind flirting. It's kind of like chess theory, right? What are the fundamentals of like pawn structure and mobilizing your rooks? What are the things that according to tons of scientific research work and don't work? Why is it? We're also going to understand. And why is it that flirting is so hard, right? It's fascinating.

Why is it that flirting is inconsistent, right? Because people will say, do this and don't do this. Turns out there are five styles of flirting that human beings kind of map into. And so if you are not using the effective style, then the person that you're flirting with, it won't go well. Okay? So there's a lot of stuff here, a lot of variability. But we're going to break it down into like a framework that you all can understand. Okay.

So the first thing, we're going to take a look at a Twitter post. All right. So I want to unmute this. Okay, let's listen. Tits bouncing, skin glistening. And yet nobody ever hits on me or opposes me. Ever. Oh, my God.

Like, please. I'll take a fucking construction worker cat call at this point. please okay so first thing we're going to share some really fascinating data okay so the first thing actually before we share it so this is the problem someone's like i go out i'm looking cute i'm looking great and no one is hitting on me so what's the deal other people will try to flirt and it'll be like horribly unsuccessful so the first thing we got to understand is what is flirting like literally what is it okay and once we understand what it is and how it works will understand why so many people are frustrated with it and how to do it effectively.

So the key thing to understand is that flirting is a form of play that is designed to indicate romantic interest. Okay? Flirting is the way that we signal interest in someone, but flirting is kind of scary, or not flirting, mating is kind of scary, right? So if we think about putting ourselves out there, this is the advice that people get. Just put yourself out there, put yourself out there. That in some ways is terrible advice, depending on how you interpret it.

Because the key thing about flirting is it is a safe way to express romantic interest. Okay? So I want to show you guys this. There's a great diagram here if I can find it. Okay, yeah, here it is. So here's what flirting is. Here's the core problem with flirting. So if I'm interested in someone, I want to express that interest.

but if I express it too hard, right, if I walk up to a random person on the street and I'm like, babe, I want you to have my babies. I'm going to be viewed as boorish, creepy. But if I am too quiet, if I'm like, if this woman, right, is just walking down the street, she is too covert, right? So she's not indicating that she's open to being approached. She's just looking cute and walking down the street. And this is the problem with flirting, is that it is sort of a balance between being overt and being

covert, which, by the way, is the way it's supposed to be designed. And the reason for that is because if I put myself out there too strongly and I get viewed as a creep, that is bad. So the key thing about flirting, the way it's designed is with plausible deniability. That is the most important thing, okay? That's like the biggest feature of flirting. So like the way this works is, let's say I'm interested in you, but I don't want to get rejected and I don't want to be a creep.

I don't want to get reported to HR, right? So what am I going to do is I'm going to come up to you and I'm going to flirt. I'm going to say something that has a double meaning. Hey, do you want to grab a drink after work? What does that mean? Does it mean, hey, I'm interested in you. This is a date. Does it mean we're just work colleagues and we want to grab a drink after work?

What does it mean? The whole point of flirting, and this is what people find infuriating. They're like, I don't know what this guy means. Is he asking me out on date or is he going out as coworkers? The whole point is we don't know. And that's the way it's supposed to be, because this is how we maintain safety, right? So then what happens is someone says yes or they say no, they say yes. And now what I've done is I've sent a signal that is ambiguous.

And the person accepts the signal. And then when we start, when we go to grab drinks, right, are there other people there? Or there are not other people there? Then there are other people there. Oh, so this isn't a date. Right? And so then like then what happens is like we're talking and then we're kind of flirting. Okay.

So here's what flirting looks like. By the way, I love this. Where is this? Oh, yeah. Okay. So here's a great clip. Okay. So let's see if you all can spot the flirting.

Okay. Can you guys spot the flirting at jet propulsion laboratory? Can you guys, can you guys spot it? You see it? Right? So this is the key thing about flirting. Is it's a form of escalation of things that are, that people are comfortable with.

But in this case, we can spot it. The really scary thing is that most people can't spot flirting. So I'm going to show you all which one. And I got all mixed up with my, yeah, this one. Okay. So I'm going to show you all a study. So remember, the key thing about flirting is there's plausible deniability. Okay, so the way it's designed, it's infuriating is that people don't know when you're flirting.

Okay, so let's take a look at a study. All right, so I'm going to give you all some background. Super cool experiment. So what they did is they had an experiment where they blinded people. They're like, hey, we're going to, we want you guys to observe some human interactions. And so what they did is they had two actors who are flirting. Okay? So it's like we have neutral observers and actors who are, actors who are flirting, and then we

have people observing them. And here's what they found. H5 predicts that targets who are not flirting would be more accurately perceived than targets who are flirting. The results indicate strong support for H5, Hypothesis 5. Accuracy, 84% was higher when partners were not flirting compared to when partners were flirting. So let's understand what this means. So we had the actors, hey, I want the two y'all to interact and don't flirt.

And then we asked neutral observers, hey, are they flirting or are they not flirting? and neutral observers are able to guess with 84% accuracy, these people are not flirting. They're right 85% of the time, 84% of time. Then we had the actors say, hey, we want you all to flirt. And then we asked the neutral observers, hey, are these people flirting? They were correct 28% of the time. Okay, this is wild. So here's the other interesting thing from the study.

Where is this? Yeah. As the percent of videos with targets flirting increased from, zero to 100%. So as we start flirting more on the video, where 100% of videos involve flirting, the detection accuracy rates fell from 61% to 42%. Right? Both finding support prior research that suggests that a lack of interest is more easily interpreted than the presence of interest. This is what makes flirting hard. By its nature, flirting is designed to, to be missed rather than be overly signaled.

Right? So the way that human beings have evolved to flirt is we would rather flirt and have no one detect it rather than flirt too hard and have somebody feel creepy, view us as a threat, etc. Okay, this is the backdrop. This is the backdrop of why it's so freaking frustrating. And we get to how to flirt well and how to flirt portal. So, flirting is a skill of sort of empathic dance.

Okay? The purpose of flirting, like what flirting is really indicating, someone who flirts well, is someone who is able to get you. That's what flirting is all about. Does this person get me, right? Do they understand me? Can they make me laugh? Can they make me feel comfortable?

Are they someone who is boorish, right? I love this term. We don't use this term enough. So when the risk is high and they're too overt, they end up in the boorish area. So these are people who are like, they're cringe. Okay. And then if the risk is really low and I'm way too covert, then I end up as shy and no one ever knows that I'm interested in them.

These are the two key problems that people run into. Either they signal too highly and the risk is too high and then people don't like it. or they don't signal highly enough. And this is this core problem, right, that people kind of run into, which is that, like, I don't know what to do. Should I approach women or should I not approach women? Because here you have some of these TikToks or Twitters or whatever with women saying, like, I don't like being, people don't approach me.

What do I need to do? What do I need to do? What do you need to signal high availability, TLDR or spoiler alert. Women actually make the first move by signaling availability. We'll see some research for that in a second. Okay. But this is the problem is no one knows what to do. So the skill of flirting is to be in this zone of not too overt, not too covert.

So what happens is I send a signal, right? Hey, you want to grab a drink? Sure. Are we going with people? Are we going by ourselves? Oh, my God. So now I'm like, oh, I was planning on, in my mind, I'm like, I'm planning on going by myself. but it seems like maybe you're not comfortable with that.

I was like, yeah, we can invite some people at the office. So then we all go together. Right? So I sent a signal. I received another signal. I adapted to that signal. And then we go together and then people are like, all right, I'm going to head out. I'm going to head out.

And then I'm like, hey, do you want to grab dinner? Are you hungry? Right? Because we'll talk about what happens during that happy hour with people at work. Now I'm sending another signal. Hey, there was a group thing that I wasn't sure if you were safe about. now I'm making it super clear. Everybody else is leaving.

Do you want to grab food? Is it romantic or are we still going as friends? That's unclear, but I'm escalating. So this is what flirting is. It is a series of escalations. And then maybe we go to dinner and then there's a little bit of touching. There's a little bit of like, you know, arm on the shoulder. We'll get to that at the end of the lecture.

We'll talk about the specifics of how to flirt. Okay. And then there is innuendo. So this is another key thing about flirting. Flirting is all about innuendo. It is about maintaining this balance between covertness and overtness. Right?

So my Uber driver is hot and I'm flirting so hard by typing some nonsense aggressively in my phone so that he knows I'm a powerful businessman. Hilarious. Okay? So not this paper. Not this paper.

Not this paper. Hold on. No. I'm looking for anything. paper. Is it this one? No, hold on. I need to find a paper. Wait, what am I talking about? I had this all organized and then I'd restart my freaking PC. Overt versus cohort. Oh yeah, it's this paper. Okay. So I'm going to show you all an example. There's a really good example of what covert versus overt looks like, okay, out of the context of flirting. So the question is,

How do we, this is why I couldn't find it because it's in the same paper. No. How do we stay in this zone? So this is what y'all are going to ask, right? What's an example? How do we stay here where we're not too overt and we're not too covert? Let's take a look. They offer the example of a motorist stopped for speeding.

In a world without Grecian indirect speech, the driver would face a certain cost and the choice to either accept that cost or gamble on the chance that the officer is dishonest and offer a bribe. Hey, if you let me go without a ticket, let's say I get stopped for speeding. If you let me go without a ticket, I'll pay you 50 bucks. That is overt. It is high risk. The cop could take the 50 bucks, or they could be like, I'm arresting you or I'm adding a charge for bribery. You guys see, this is high risk.

So instead, in a Grecian world with indirect speech, the driver can change the costs and payoffs of this matrix for this matrix by asking, is there some way that we can settle this here, officer? Okay. So in the case of bribery, hey, is this a fine that I can pay right here? Can I just pay you? Am I offering a bribe? Or am I just offering to pay for the fine? I'm offering to pay my fine. There's plausible deniability. And then the cop says, yeah, you can pay it right here. Great. What's the best way to pay it? Can I give you cash? Right? And then the officers, yeah, cash works great. And then I'm like, okay, officer, is there anything else that I need to do?

Officers like, nope, taken care of. And now what happens is if someone stops me down the road and they're like, hey, did you bribe this guy? I was like, no, I paid my fine. And then if somebody asked the officer, they're like, hey, did you give this guy a ticket? The officer is like, yeah, I gave him a ticket. The officer could have taken the cash and paid the fine at the courthouse. We have no idea, right? This is what flirting is.

It's indirect speech. Okay, and we'll teach you guys how to navigate that indirect speech. But the first thing to understand is, by design, it is designed to be missed. Okay, this is why flirting, you have to escalate in some ways, right? So if they miss your signal, you can be a little bit more overt. But you want to maintain that plausible deniability. Okay? So let's get into more of the details.

So first thing is that there are five styles. of flirting. Okay? Not everyone flirts the same. Now, we're going to talk about men and women. We have to offer a disclaimer. So we're going to talk about men and women because research suggests that men do this successfully and women do this successfully.

But let's remember that any time we talk about men and women in research, we are talking about bell curves. Okay? So here's men. And then here's women. And let's remember that there are some women who are higher in a particular thing. than some men. Okay? So even though the bell curves are different, this group of women is more X than this group of men. Okay, so we'll talk about what this means in a second. So if you guys are

wondering, okay, how do I flirt? Why is flirting not working? And what we'll see is that there's literally different kinds of flirting. There are five, so if you look at the research, there are five different flirting styles that have been categorized. Okay. The verbal and nonverbal correlates and five flirting styles. Let me see if this is the right paper. This is not right. I want this paper. Yeah.

Okay. So let's start with this. The traditional flirting style measures the degree to which individuals behave within the ascribed limits of traditional gender roles during courtship. Individuals who score high in the style should behaviorally adhere to gender-specific roles. man being the aggressor in courtship initiation and the woman being comparatively passive. So if you guys are like wondering about why everyone on social media is arguing about there are the feminists over here and the trad wives over there and no one can get along.

So let's let's take a look. Okay, can we like really talk about like one minute? Like why are men not approaching women in the bars anymore? Like are you guys really that scared? Because we strictly go to the bars because we literally want to be approached. Like I'm not there just to like hang out with her friends. Like yes, I want to see what. my friend, but like, I'm also there because I want to talk to people.

I feel like the whole like, oh, I've been rejected once and like now I'm terrified. Yeah. That's crazy. That's what we all, I think, say. And I'm like, okay, we're going to talk about rejection. Okay. So, this is an example of like, these people have the perception, right? And this is where, hey, we go to bars, we want to be approached.

And other one will say, when I go to a bar, I don't want. don't, women don't want to be approached in public places. So number one, stop treating all women or men the same. We're not all the same. And if you look at the data, there are five categories of flirting styles that people prefer. And this is what makes flirting so hard is we don't know which style somebody is. Okay? So the first is traditional flirting style. Man approaches, man is the aggressor. Then there's a physical flirting style. This is based on the prevalence of sexual communication, courtship initiation. In some, the communication of romantic interest is highly related to the degree to which

people employ a physical communication style. So what is a physical communication style? Okay. It is very physical. That doesn't mean that you're necessarily touching the other person. You lean forward. You smile a lot. Using your hands in conversation is indicative of this.

Sometimes it can include physical touch. There's a lot of stuff going on with body language and posture. Let me see if I can find. Yeah. Where's the behaviors? This is this paper. Okay. I'm going to show you all something cool.

Yes. Okay. So, let's look at, right? So, like, here's... It's so annoying. Right? So affirmation, compliments, expressive, gay, Pausing, palming.

Palming is like using your palms, okay? What you do with your lips, whether you shrug, whether you're teasing, whether you're leaning towards someone, whether you're crossing your legs, whether you shake your head in a conversation, what's your pitch? Okay? And so these are all the things that people look at and then they looked, they analyzed all of these behaviors in different flirting styles. And what they found is that some flirting styles, some people do a lot of this and some

people don't do a lot of this. So the physical communication style is, or flirting style, is just using your body to flirt. Okay. So it's like, you know, doing things like squishing your breasts together if you're a woman or a man and that, you know, that's what turns you on. Or that's what turns women on, you know, there's whatever. Okay. Then there's a sincere flirting style, which is marked by a desire to create an emotional bond with a potential romantic partner. Okay.

So this is like a sincere flirting style involves less fidgeting. More, sorry, less fidgeting, less teasing, less distraction, more smiling, staying tuned in, leaning forward, emphasizes genuine. I'm going to actually just write these out instead of showing you guys. I think it's going to be better. So let's compare and contrast. We're going to do it, Dr. Kay's chart. So physical style. Okay, so indicate interest with body.

Okay? So this involves motion, leaning in, facial expression. Okay. So physical proximity is also big, right? So I remember when I went on my, one of some, an early date with my wife, and we went, we were sitting at a booth. And so, you know, I, like, had her sit first. I was like, go ahead and sit, you know, I motioned with my hand. So she sat on one side of the booth.

And then I sat on the other side of the booth. And then she got up. She expressed dissatisfaction with my choice. And then she got up and she moved around to my side of the booth. And I was like, okay. And then she also told me that she had just shaved her legs. And she was wearing a miniskirt. That was great.

I still remember this. Okay? So people who are into physical flirting are more comfortable with overt signals. Okay. Now we have the traditional style, which is different. These involve for women demure behaviors. Okay. Traditional gender roles.

Right? So this is like why there's so much disagreement. about who should pay on the date. If someone has a traditional flirting style, they will adhere to the traditional gender roles, stuff like holding the door open, holding the chair, things like that. Some women find it offensive. Some women find it the most basic form of gentlemanly courtesy. And not everybody is the same. The sincere style. This is a style of flirting that involves genuine connection. So this is not something that's temporary. I want to get to know you. I want to I'm genuinely interested in who you are.

So this has less fidgeting, right? I'm not distracted. I'm locked in. I'm tuned in to this conversation. It involves less teasing, right? This isn't funny to me. I think you're amazing. I'm not teasing you.

There's smiling. There's genuine interest. Right? Wanting to get to know someone. And it signals sort of a desire for a deep connection. as opposed to a superficial interaction. And so, like, if I have a sincere flirting style, there are going to be some people who will respond well to that.

Right? And other people will be like, this guy's way too intense. Like, just chill. Like, it's not that big of a deal. Let's get to know each other a little bit, right? Which then gets us to the playful style. Okay. So this is more obvious.

This is more on the covert spectrum. You guys remember this covert thing, right? So these are going to be in, wait, where is this, the hall paper, right? So some of these will be more overt. The traditional style may be more covert, right? So if a dude, if I'm a traditional flirting style person, and as a man, I hold a door open for a woman. Am I flirting with that woman? Not necessarily.

Right. As a gentlemanly dude, I'm going to hold doors for women. That's what I was taught. Growing up in South Texas. This is what we do. This is what a man does. Man holds the door open. Man holds the chair out.

This is what you do for women. This is how you show that you are a gentleman. Not a boorish person. This is a traditional gender role kind of thing. Get me? Okay. So these are all different styles on that chart. So the playful style is more obvious.

It's engaging. it is more flirtatious, right? Like literally. Okay. It's teasing. It's fun. That's the whole point of it. It sometimes indicates, succeeds better in short-term relationships. Okay. But this is, it's a playful style. It's really different. Like, so there's a lot of people, you know, I'll see posts of people saying, I hate small talk. I want to form genuine connections with people. And other people like, bro, you're way too intense. Like, let's just chill out, bro. Just chill out. Right?

So people have different preferences for what they want. And then we finally have the polite style. So this is reserved, distancing. Okay? And the goal here is to avoid offending. Okay? So I'll give you guys a great example of this. So if you guys have ever.

read anything. Not Charlotte Bronte. Dude, who's the... Jane Austen. I can't believe that. I love Jane Austen. Okay. So Jane Austen is a great example

of the polite flirting style. Where, like, the Jane Austen style of flirting is, I walk into your house, and I say, on some order of business. and the way that I flirt is by looking away. And the way that you respond to that flirtation is also by looking away. And the way that we're flirting is we're both sitting in the same room

and we're waiting for somebody else to show up. And then it's like, you know, and then somebody else shows up and then we talk and then I say goodbye. And then I ride a horse a lot, I guess, because I need to get some energy out. and then you are vexed, right? You're vexed for some amount of time. And then we see each other at a ball. And then we once again get together to not speak.

And then, you know, someone comments about how there are so many beautiful women there. And then I say, yes, indeed, there are many beautiful women. And I take a sip of my drink and then you're there. You can hear me. I take a sip of my drink and then I don't look at you. and then you were offended and then you leave in a huff and then I feel bad

and then I follow after you and then I say what's wrong have I offended you and then you say you have vexed me so of course you've offended me and then I say

well I didn't mean to offend and then you say you shouldn't be here this is inappropriate and I say yes I shouldn't be here this is inappropriate I must leave she's like

so then you leave and then I say I'm leaving but then we both look at each other very intensely. And then someone walks in and then considers it inappropriate that the two of us are by ourselves. And now I've ruined your chastity. Okay? Right?

This is flirting. Like some people flirt like this. They flirt by getting angry with each other and looking away. Okay? So when women are walking down the, street like this, right? And they're like, why aren't men flirting with me? No, dude, there are men flirting with you. There are men who are on the park benches, who are flirting with you. I treat all females, the same, milady, milady. Let me tip my fedora to you, milady.

And that I shall, I shall, I shall, I shall honor your chastity. And I shan't, I shan't degrade you by coming upon you and marring you with the presence of my fedora. So I shall observe you from afar

and I shall have this quiet love deep in my heart, a love that knows no bounds. And this is how I flirt. Okay? This is how I flirt. So this is what y'all got to understand. This is why it's hard.

You got to figure out, first of all, what your flirting style is. And secondly, you have to figure out what their flirting style. And this is what the huge thing about flirting is. So remember, flirting is like the primary way that we test the waters for someone's potential as a partner. So a huge part of flirting, the reason it is so ambiguous is because literally it is a test of whether someone can read me and I can read them.

That's what it is. because in a relationship, see, this whole like talk about your feelings thing. Oh my God, you should talk about your feelings in a relationship. Oh, my God, he's so articulate. She talks about her feelings so much. It's so annoying. Oh, my God. This whole talking about a feelings thing is like the last 50 years, if even, probably 20 years, 30 years.

For like 10,000 years before that, human beings who were mating were not talking about their feelings. We were feeling each other out instead. And this is what's really important is, how do I know that you will get me? Right? I know that you will get me or won't get me based on our capacity to flirt. Are you able to respect my boundaries? Right? This is really important.

So when I ask you, hey, are we going with people? You catch that signal. And then you indicate safety. And you're like, we can invite other people. And that language is so precise, right? This is like bribing a cop. We can. Does that indicate that I was planning on it?

Right? There's so much subtlety in flirting. So this is not a situation of, you know, pawn to rooks night, whatever the fuck. I don't play chess, so I don't really know. It's not like you do this. And this is why like pickup lines are so bad. Pickup lines are terrible. Because you have this idea that there is a line that will flip a switch in somebody's head

and make them like you. The concept of pickup line is flawed. And this is why, so this is what's really interesting. If you look at all this kind of red pill pickup artist's perspective, right, they'll say use pickup lines. And what they're doing is they have a chess opening. And then what they advise people is like, you know, you have to try this on 100 women. Just approach random people at bars and keep doing it. And then you'll learn.

It's not that you'll learn. I mean, you'll learn certain things and we'll get to that in a second. But the main thing is you're just like, you're trying, you're just trying this out randomly on lots of people. So the really interesting thing is, I'm not saying that you can never use a pickup line, but what's important about a pickup line is not the line itself. It is the way that you deliver it.

Right. It's like when you offer a cheesy pickup line and they cringe, how do you respond to that? Are you able to read them? Right? Or when you offer a cheesy pickup line and they laugh, but they say it's a cheesy pickup line, that's when you say,

I have so many more cheesy things to say. And then you smile confidently. Do you want to hear the next one? They're like, no, I think I'm okay. All right. Right? So you signal to people. And then they're like, okay, yeah, give me the other one.

And then you offer the second one. And then this person and their friends laugh. And they're like, okay, how many more you got? I say, I've got a third one. It's really good. And they say, okay, I'm just making this shit up, okay? They're like, okay, what's the third one? I'm like, this one I can't say out loud.

I have to whisper it into your ear. And then, you know, it's like, bam. Like, now what? Right? So now I'm escalating the intimacy. And then she says, no, thank you. And then I turn to one of her friends and I'm like, do you want to hear it? And then the friend, because they're not part of the interaction, right?

Or they're like sort of a passive observer of the interaction. Then what we do is whisper into the friends of your friend starts laughing. And then I'm like, sorry, I can only use it once. And then you leave the other person hanging. Right? This is how flirting works. It's playfulness, some degree of back and forth. Okay?

And I don't know. This could fail miserably. I'm pretty good at flirting, though, if you guys can't tell. Maybe I'm not. Who knows? Okay? Right? But it's all about being able to read the other person.

And that's why it's not scripted. Right? It's, it's, ferving is the other person's way of gauging your empathy capacity. and making people laugh. So let's get to this for a second. Okay, so we went through the flirting styles. And just to explain to you all what the flirting styles are, you guys may say, but wait, what's the difference between polite, flirting,

and traditional flirting? And literally what they did is they assessed people's flirting across all of these things. Okay, so pitch, plays with objects, self-touch, teasing, leg cross. And what they found is that basically there are five clusters of things. People who are traditional flirts will not tease. People who are playful will tease. People who are sincere will not tease. But they will self-disclose.

They'll speak a lot. People who are traditional may tease, but they will, they'll do a lot of leg crossing, for example. So there's like all of these behaviors and they basically cluster into five groups. So if you want to flirt successfully, first thing that you've got to do is understand, okay, what class am I? What am I naturally attuned to? And then you have to be able to adapt some. And this is what's really important when you are talking to someone, right? A lot of this stuff happens really fast.

You have to think like, okay, like what kind of person is this person? Are they someone who's going to want to hold the chair open? Do they want me to hold the door? And there's lots of little stuff, right? So if I hold the door open for someone and they look at me with approval, and they kind of sashay by, then I know that that's a positive signal. Right? Does that kind of make sense?

So, like, I have to be paying attention empathically to what people are doing. Okay, let's talk about, hold on, no, I need you to stop for a second. Okay. Let's talk about, hold on. I'm missing a paper. Okay. Let's talk about this other part real quick, okay? I can't find this paper right now, but that's okay.

So, let's talk about what makes flirting hard. A couple of very important principles, okay? So. Oh, I've been rejected once, and now I'm terrified. Yeah. Crazy. That's what we all, I think, say. And I'm like, I'm like, okay, fine.

Then you never going to, like, meet your wife. No, right? Like, just try. Like, you have a being single. Have you guys not been. By rejected by other things in your life like a job or whatever like school playing like hello Like we're not gonna bite like we want to be approached and we want to talk to you like just read the room You're gonna find the right girls that are either guess I'll entertain me for the night or I'll take I'll go out on a day with you or I'll fucking marry you

Like literally at the end of the day doesn't fucking matter. It's just like fucking make a move and who gives a fucking shit Because you're always in the same spot I also feel like all you guys have to remember like all girls all they want is to be in a relationship or to be married. Okay. So these women are talking about rejection. They're like, it's not that big of a deal. Okay. So there's some really fascinating stuff about flirting, which is that flirting is that flirting is heavily moderated by rejection sensitivity and self-esteem. Okay. So if you look at studies on flirting, people who have high self-esteem are far more successful at flirting. So remember, if we go back to our core idea of like what flirting is, if I am too overt, right, I can be perceived as boorish. And remember, the goal of flirting is plausible deniability. I don't want to end up as

someone who's been rejected. So what we know from science of flirting is that if you have a high self-esteem, you can afford rejection, right? So these women, I would imagine they have relatively high self-esteem based on how they're talking about things because they're like, what's the big deal? Haven't you been rejected by other things in your life? And the answer is yes, and those have been devastating. Right? So for some people, rejection is devastating.

And for some people, rejection is not devastating. The higher your self-esteem is, the more you can handle rejection. And so oftentimes what I find when I work with people is that, like, you know, there's people who are really concerned about rejection. it hurts so much. So they can't afford to give things a shot. So a lot of people, like, just put yourself out there. It'll work great.

But the experience of putting yourself out there is fundamentally different depending on what your self-esteem is. This is why it's huge. But like, if we look at the factors that result in a successful relationship, this is what a lot of people don't get, right? So if you have sort of the forever alone crowd, the people who think they're ugly, things like that, and they may be ugly. Like, there are ugly people out there. But the problem is that they grossly underestimate two things, which is self-esteem and negative bias. Okay, so this is more

specifically called, yeah, negativity bias. Okay. So let's talk about this for a second. So if you look at the red pill pickup artist community, they advocate for a lot of things. Okay, so one thing that they advocate for is you just keep asking girls out, right? We sort of objectify women. They're like, just keep asking them out. We don't care if they're comfortable or uncomfortable. I'm not saying all the red pillars are like that, but they're like, you just keep asking people out. So this is a really interesting technique

because it's basically exposure and response prevention. You were afraid of rejection. What we're actually going to do is we're going to advocate that you keep getting rejected until you are no longer afraid of rejection. And the fear of rejection is a huge element of your end success at getting laid or even ending up in a long-term relationship.

Does that make sense? So the reason I think that they advocate for this stuff is because it works, right? It actually solves one of the key problems that betas have, right? They're like, they never talk to people. They're way too shy. So we have to get you used to rejection sensitivity through exposure and response prevention. Now, I'm not advocating for that path because I think it inconveniences a lot of people. Oftentimes it is tied together with other kinds of objectifying sort of perspectives.

But they're right about the principle, which is that you need. some way to handle rejection. What I prefer is actually directly targeting self-esteem. So let's help you develop your confidence, which by the way, they do too. Right. So what do they say if you're someone who's a loser virgin? They say, hit the gym, get your work stuff in order, become financially secure, become independent, become someone that you can be proud. You can hold your head up high. Looks max. Get ripped. Drive a nice car. Right. So all of these things will boost some degree of self-esteem, right? They're not, there's some problems there with, you know, fragile ego and things like that. But generally speaking, there's steps in the right

direction. I don't care about the ego stuff from, from toxic masculinity or manisphere kind of stuff. I'm saying it's just anyone who physically exercises will, the physiological changes from regular exercise will boost your self-esteem. Your cortisol levels will even out. You'll be less stressed throughout the day. You'll sleep better at night. When you sleep better at night, when you sleep nine hours a night because your body is doing an abysm, your brain also gets more REM sleep. The more REM sleep that you get, the more you emotionally process. So physical exercise improves self-esteem without any of the weird egotistical stuff.

And then you can be proud of yourself, right? Now when you look in the mirror, you don't think you're pathetic, you start to look good. You're like, hey, like, I look decent. That boost self-esteem. So they're on to a lot of really good stuff. So working on self-esteem is huge directly. And what a lot of people don't understand is when they talk about mating success as a defined thing, women want this, women want dudes who are attractive, women who want dudes who have a big dick, guys only want women with big tits, or guys want women who are proportioned in this particular way, guys want women who have a particular ethnicity. Some of those preferences may exist somewhere.

I'm not saying that they don't, but I think the key thing that people miss is what are the other variables in the equation? And self-esteem is a huge modifiable variable. Okay? The other huge modifiable variable, and this is what's so devastating, is negativity bias. So there are some people who glasses have full, okay? Some people see the glasses half full. Some people see the glasses half empty.

A good example of negativity bias is like in the first. forever alone community. Okay? If you like read these posts and we'll get to there's a lot of validity to them. They're not wrong. We'll get to how that happens. But if you look at these, like there's a lot of people who approach dating with a huge negativity bias.

And here's why the negativity bias is so damaging. Because remember, in flirting, there are ambiguous signals. Most of the signals are ambiguous, right? So there's positive signals in flirting. There's negative signals in flirting. Each of those are maybe 15%. 70% of signals are ambiguous. And if you have a negativity bias, you are interpreting those ambiguous signals in a negative way.

So in the scenario, without a negativity bias, 15% positive, 15% negative, 70% mixed signals. I don't know if this girl is into me or not. I don't know if this guy is into me or not. It's very confusing. It's a lot of uncertainty. It's very frustrating. But if you have a negativity bias, look at how the numbers change. 15% positive, which can even be dumped down to neutral, 15% negative.

And then 70% ambiguous becomes 70% negative. Now it's 85% negative, 15% positive. And when you have this negativity bias and you receive an 85% negative signal from the first person, that reinforces your negativity bias. and then you try again and then it becomes worse. Now I've tried to date three people that are 85% negative, 90% negative, and 95% negative. And so what happens with people who have this sort of forever alone mindset is that they start to form this kind of like, you know, snowflake into avalanche kind of mentality.

And they're not wrong, by the way. This is what's really scary about it. Those are their experiences, right? And so then what happens is their self-esteem starts to go down. As their self-esteem goes down and we're going to get to a lot of other factors that lead to successful dating or successful flirting and unsuccessful flirting, they start to recruit all these factors which we'll get to. And so then they do genuinely have bad experience after bad experience. As the negativity bias goes up, their experiences get worse, their experiences get worse, their experiences get worse. And suddenly it started as a snowflake, now it's an avalanche.

and they're like, I will be alone for the rest of my life. And if you look at their interpretation of the data, they are not wrong, right? That this is what their experience is. The thing that they could be wrong about, we don't know because we don't know what their lives are like, right, is which of these factors are modifiable? And I've worked with a lot of these people in my office, and I've seen them coming in as virgins, and then two years later, they're in a healthy relationship. I've seen success many times.

But of course, if you're listening to this, you'll say, yeah, you've seen a success with other people, but not me. Oh, look, your negativity bias is showing. Right? Oh, yeah, 50% of people can fix it. 50% of people can't fix it. And I'm in the 50% that can't fix it. Boom, right there. How do you know that? Right? You believe that because you've had all of these experiences, fair enough. But this is absolutely modifiable. Okay. And even if we look at sort of the pickup artist, red pill community, manosphere kind of community, they will address the negativity bias in a really interesting way, which is they, this is why they demonize people. And this is not just men, right? So we see this in the female dating strategy community and the pink pill community. There's a lot of demonization

of the gender that you're into. And when we demonize them, it helps us engage with things without that negativity bias. That negativity bias is still there, but we just shape it in a way that no longer impacts our behavior in terms of engaging in a relationship. It still impacts it, but I'm able to talk to people now, at least. I use kind of that anger or that sense of ego or that sense of demeaning the other person to help myself feel comfortable. It's an effective way to deal with the negativity bias. I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's effective. Okay?

So the interesting thing is there are two really important things that we can do. First is, if you have a negativity bias, the most important thing that you can do is be curious about the person that you're interacting with. So the negativity bias means that I'm in my own head interpreting signals from the other person, and I'm having it reflect on me. Oh, this person didn't laugh at my joke. That means they're not into me. This person chose to not drink. that means that they don't trust me. Right?

So instead, like, if you literally look at the way that the negativity bias works, the negative bias is in my own head, thinking about me. And so the simplest best antidote is to just be curious about the other person. Let me genuinely get to know who cares what they think about me, whether this is going anywhere or not going anywhere. I have one hour to get to know another human being and learns a perspective about the world that I will maybe never see again. Let me make the most of it.

Let me make the most of this interaction. Let me try to understand this person. And literally, a big part of this cognitive training that we do in therapy is getting people out of their own head and into something else. So other examples are like grounding meditations, right? Where we're literally getting you out of your head. And that can have a huge impact. In terms of sensitivity, I mean, low self-esteem, this is where it's really interesting.

So there are high signaling partners and there are low signaling partners. Oftentimes what people with low self-esteem need is a very very, high signal from the other person. This is why they sort of end up alone because in order to overcome like this person wouldn't be interested in me. Right. So what they, what the other person really has to do is signal really hard. Right? They have to enter this danger zone of overt signaling. So if you're with someone who has low self-esteem, this is the kind of signal that you need to get their attention. So if you're interested in someone who's, you're, you're interested in someone who and you perceive that they have low self-esteem,

you need to let them know a little bit more clearly that you're interested in that you think they're amazing and you would love to spend more time with them. Because the thought that someone would want to spend more time with me and that someone thinks that I'm amazing is so perplexing. So if you're at all ambiguous about it, like it's going to get missed. And this is exactly why flirting is the technique that gets people together,

because flirting involves reading the other person. And then the other person, I don't know, if someone else is able to read me, that indicates a positive thing for our future relationship. They understand how I feel. They understand my worldview. They are able to compliment what I need, right? Not compliment in terms of saying that my hair looks nice. I mean, compliment is an E-M-E-N-T. They can match my energy. That's a huge part of what flirting is about. Okay? Now let's get to the things that make people good at flirt. or bad at flirting.

Okay. So first thing that we're going to do is talk about the sequence of flirting. So nonverbal behavior is courtship signals the role of control and choice and selecting partners. So we provide evidence based on direct observation of behavior and encounters of opposite sex strangers that women initiate and control the outcome. while female affirmative behavior at this stage modulates the male verbal output in later stages in four to ten minutes. Okay. So this is one of the key things that I think a lot of women are missing.

If you look at the average situation, okay, so remember that there's exceptions to this. But the sequence of flirting happens like this. The first thing that actually happens is woman signals availability. And if a woman signals an availability, that's how a dude knows that it's okay to approach. Then the dude approaches. Okay? And it's like, this is literally why we have big wedding rings. I mean, I'm sure there's more to it.

But if you look at like the male wedding band and the female wedding band, one of them is more transmissible than the other. Right? So the wedding band is the simplest way. It's like literally something that we put on that. I don't have to say anything. I have to do anything. I don't look at you. If I have a wedding ring on, it signals I am unavailable.

If I don't have a wedding ring on, it signals I am available. And if you ask people, right, including women, would you ever wear a ring on your wedding finger or your wedding band? You know, left hand, fourth finger, right? They won't wear it unless, I mean, some of them will. But like, that's the signal. the fundamental signal, right? And so we literally have baked a society that has, at least in the in the U.S., in India people wear it on the right hand. Right, we've built a society where there is a signal of availability which is like fucking stamped on. And so you have to signal availability

first. That's what the data suggests. Okay? And signaling availability can be overt or covert, you know, it can be smiling at someone. It can be making eye contact at someone, right? And like, I don't know if you guys remember like this thing where it's like, oh, I'm looking, oh, right? That's signaling availability, continuing to look. I remember when I was in medical school, I had a really good friend who was gay. And I asked him, I was like, how do you know if a guy is gay? And he laughed.

And then he was like, you know, and it was clear to me that he knew. Right? And I was like, like, did you know I was not gay when you first saw me? And he's like, absolutely, man. No, there's not a single gay bone in your body. But, and then I was, but how? Right. So this is like, this is what excites me about things. It's like understanding the mechanisms.

How does it work? How do you know? How did you know that I wasn't gay? And he's like, it's about the gay eyes. It's all about the eyes. That's how they can be butch. They can be Texan, wearing cowboy boots. effeminate, not a feminine,

don't matter. It's all about the ass. It's about the gay ass. That was his answer. Okay. Great, great, great human being. Wonderful neurologist. So,

you know, a lot of the signaling of availability actually happens in subtle ways. Okay? So it happens, it's not like, so wedding ring is one, but signaling your availability. Right? And so there were many things that, like,

in my relationship with my wife now, right? So there were many things that, you know, she would signal pretty overtly, which is probably what I needed. The story that I told you guys about, she moved over to my side of the booth. And because, like, I had low self-esteem, sort of. And I was this mug thing, which had helped some,

but, like, I was, like, I had this particular style of flirting, which didn't match her style. And then, like, I kind of warmed up to it. Okay? Okay. So, what are the things that lead to good relationships and what are the things that lead to bad relationships? Okay, let's take a look at this one. Okay. So, pay attention to me tonight. I'm so fucking sick of this shit. Oh my God. Touch a boob, buy a drink. I mean, it's like very fucking simple.

Okay. Touch a boob or buy. Okay. Love this paper. What constitutes bad flirting? An explorative study of deal breakers. This study is amazing. What they did is isolate 11 things that are bad flirting. Okay. Vulgar vocabulary, poor looks, excessive intimacy.

He, she touches me without my consent. Lack of intelligence, narcissism, lack of humor and low self-esteem, stinginess, bad hygiene, slimy approach, sexist comments, slimy comments about my looks, different views. Okay? Lack of exclusive interest. So they looked at all of these factors, right? He or she constantly interrupts me when I speak, poor looks, effusive, aggressive approach,

to revealing dressing. We'll go into more into these. And here's the really cool thing about the study. They ranked them in terms of the... size of the impact. Okay? Slimy approach is the biggest deal breaker. Bad hygiene is the second biggest deal breaker.

Here's the really interesting thing. Poor looks is second from the bottom in effect size. Okay? So a lot of people think that their genetics determine their dating success. And I've been advocating for this for a while, but like people don't seem to want to hear it or don't believe it or whatever. but like here is another study that shows that physical attractiveness is not nearly as big of a deal breaker is your approach, your hygiene, your exclusive interest, different views, vulgar vocabulary, lack of intelligence, right?

So let's go over these and understand them. And the cool thing is we'll understand why dating is so hard once we realize these things. Okay. So let's start with, let's talk about a couple of these. So first thing, the worst thing that you can do is be slimy, be cringe. Right? So making inappropriate comments. And this, by the way, boorish, unskilled, not good at flirting.

Making inappropriate comments, number one. Okay, being rude, being sexually pushy, okay? Now remember that there are times to escalate to sexual interest. That's what we cover in the guide, right? Like this is the whole point of the guide is we cover, you guys may be thinking throughout this lecture. Like, okay, but what about, what about chemistry? How do I know when it is appropriate to sexually, you know, proposition someone sexually?

How do I touch? What's the appropriate level of touch? These are all things that are not related to flirting. is in the initial engagement, feeling somebody out. And then there's a lot of stuff that comes after that, could do a two-hour lecture on each of those. That's the whole point of the guide as it walks through all this stuff.

Okay? Being sexually pushy. Right? But then some people may like, so I think this is why like this lady is kind of confused, right? She's like, touch a boob, buy a drink. So this is a good example of the bell curve

where like the majority of women right, don't want you to touch a boob when you meet them. But there are some women who are okay with you touching a boob. Or maybe actually this belongs over here, because more men may be okay with you grabbing their crotch. Right? And there are some women that may be okay with forward sexual things. I don't know if this is actually true or not. Maybe the men are over here.

Who knows? I don't know. Okay, but this is kind of the point, is that this does work for some people. Right? And so if you think about the slimy approach, who's, does that work for? Here's who it works for. It's people who have a template of forward behavior. So in, you know, in this video that we did on YouTube about why you shouldn't date people that you're attracted to. It's kind of weird, right? You shouldn't date people that you're attracted to.

That's because there are all these things like projection. You're not attracted to a human. You're attracted to your projection onto that human. Projection, projective identification, repetition, compulsion. So all of, these are other complicated. topics that we cover in the guide, but my point is that the majority of people will say that slimyness is the worst thing that you can do. But there are many people for whom sliminess works, and here are some of the reasons, right? One reason that slimyness can work for lack of better terms is daddy issues if we're talking about for a woman, or mommy issues if we're talking about a guy. Okay? Second most important thing, bad hygiene. Okay, bad breath, bad oral hygiene is huge.

Teeth, floss, boys and girls, body odor, and then also a sense of unkemptness. So here's what's really, really, really, really, really interesting. facial structure, bone structure matters less than body odor, right? I want you all to imagine someone who has the most asymmetric, Thor-like, 6-4-amane structure whose homeless is missing teeth, has terrible breath and terrible body odor. And then I want you to imagine someone who is 5'2, well-groomed,

you know, has a nice haircut, clothes that fit, has a white smile with all of the teeth intact. Which person do you think is more unattractive? Like, this is the thing. I'm using extreme examples of both, right?

One who won the genetic lottery, one who lost the genetic lottery, but does winning the genetic lottery, in having the shit of hygiene, beat out losing the genetic lottery and having great hygiene, the data suggests no. Okay?

Data suggests no. But once again, there's variability. Right? Because there are some people who exist on the planet that are more comfortable with bad hygiene than they are with poor genetics in terms of facial structure or height or whatever. Okay?

Next thing, this is huge. So what I really love about doing this research is that sometimes I stumble on a scientific study that explains what the hell is going on today. So one of the three biggest mistakes, okay, after being sexually pushy and fucking missing teeth and having terrible, having halitosis and bad breath. In the ballpark of that is lack of exclusive interest, appearing bored, looking at other people, flirting with other people, okay? Let me just make sure. Yeah, this is a big one. Signal that they aren't interested in you specifically. right so this is like i'm looking to get laid tonight i don't really care with who kind of

kind of attitude there's nothing special about you you're just a anyone will do kind of thing they're looking for a placeholder okay so this is what's really scary is that 50 years ago a lack of exclusive interest was a big big big no no one of the one of the the worst things that you can do while flirting is fucking, if I'm flirting with one person, flirting with their friend, right? I'm flirting with you, telling you're hot and I'm going to grab this girl's ass. Terrible mistake. This has become, the lack of exclusive interest has become the norm in online dating culture. It has become the standard, the acceptable. Right? We all have to be talking to multiple people at the same time.

And this is why things are like, this is why like loneliness epidemic is on the rise. Dating and mated crisis is on the rise because sometimes when I read some of this research, I stumble on something that I'm like, oh, this is a core part of how human beings flirt successfully. They demonstrate exclusive interest, right? You take any Jane Austen novel and then even a whiff of interest in somebody else. sends people into a fucking tailspin. A whiff.

Oh, I saw you were dancing with Lady Brahman's daughter. Oh my goodness. I'm going to go jump in Lake. Never speak to me again. Please. Go away. Don't break my heart.

You looked at another woman. Oh, my goodness. Right? And like this has become the norm. And this is what's like scary about technology is like technology is changing the way that we interact with each other. But even though technology is changing the way that we interact with each other, our brains are not changing the same amount. So everyone knows you shouldn't express exclusive interest.

But every one of our brains feels equally hurt and annoyed by that. Right. Tell me I'm wrong. Please. Like literally. Like if you guys disagree with this, you're like, no, Dr. Kay, like, that's not how it works. this is an adaptation, right? We learn to be okay with it because it's standard.

And if other people are going to talk to other people, like, I'm not going to over-invest in one person if they're talking to somebody else. But even if you think about that kind of thinking, it's like, I don't want to be left hanging. That's why I'm doing it. But I have never heard, and maybe I'm ignorant here, and maybe you guys can correct me,

I've never heard someone say, yeah, You know, the nicest thing is that I'm really into this person and they're talking to six people. Oh, my God, it's such a relief. There are situations where people can be like, yeah, this person has way too much emotional energy. Like they're dumping it all in me. I wish they would distribute to other people. But when we're talking about flirtation, is it attractive to be flirting with someone and they start flirting with somebody else? Are you like, oh my God, that is the hardest?

think. And people may say, okay, well, if you are flirting with person A, that may make you more attractive to person B, right? So this kind of stuff, there's like some evidence for, right? If you're like a man who's like a good caregiver of your children, sometimes that can attract women, as an example. But that's a different scenario from the initial flirtatious engagement. And the lack of exclusive interest is not just about talking to multiple people. It is also about a lack of interest in you specifically. I'm just, you're the same as the other five people I'm talking to. There's nothing special about you. I don't understand you specifically. I'm just looking for a dick. That's it. Any dick will do. And imagine how the person on the other side of that

feels. Like some people may be down the great. Looking for a dick. I got one. Easy peasy, lemon squeasy. But that's not usually what flirtation looks like, right? That's like satisfying some kind of need. So the short-term relationship is fine, doesn't require a whole lot of flirtation. I've seen this as a psychiatrist before, you know, sometimes people who have BPD or struggling with addiction or or antisocial or narcissistic or super depressed or even have an anxious attachment style. They're just looking to get some needs met. Fine. I'm not saying. I'm not saying, it's always healthy, but I'm not placing a moral judgment on that. What I'm talking about, remember, we're talking about flirting here.

We're talking about what are the things to do or not do when you are engaging with someone to keep and cultivate their interest in you? And lack of exclusive interest is a big no-no. Next, vulgar vocabulary, right? Females, calling women females, is. a good example of this. Not a whole lot of women that are like, oh my God, I love the way that he reduces me to a biological simplicity.

Okay. Crude course language. Basically, this is what you guys need to do. If you're trying to figure out what is crude course language, there's what you guys do. If you guys want to understand what crude course language is and how not to flirt with people, this is what you do. you install this game called Dota 2. And then there's this thing in Dota 2 called Behavior Score,

which is like, and as your behavior score drops, you lose the ability to communicate, and eventually you end up in this thing called low priority queue, which is you with all the other primitive creatures, terrible human beings who are also low priority. You go and you just listen to the communications. Well, they can't communicate because they're voice muted. But you feel the communication, right?

you go to some low prior game. You go to the drags of the internet and you look at how people communicate. You go to places where people have been banned from communicating in other places. There's the regular humans and then there's the people who have been banned. Low priority Q is a great example of this.

You go there and that is the way to not behave. Whatever they do, you do the opposite. That's what you do. You go to places like 4chan. Look at the way people talk on 4chan. Don't talk that way when you're flirting. Don't use those words. Don't use that vocabulary.

Example. Be me. Sadge. Okay? I love 4chan. But it's a great example of what not to do when trying to flirt with people. Next is poor looks. Okay.

So this is where unattractive body or face, dressed badly, unkempt. And then here's the other thing that's really. really interesting. How do I say this? Unappealing movement or posture. Okay? So this is where, like, I think the looks maxers are like, you know, onto something, right? So you can optimize these things.

It'll improve your attractiveness. For sure. So some of this stuff is not modifiable. But the really interesting thing is even when it comes to looks, and this is the whole point behind looks maxing, right? A lot of it is modifiable. Even the way that you walk affects people's response to flirting. Your posture affects people's response to your flirting. Deal breaker is having like slovenly posture being unkempt, you know, stumbling over to say, hey, how you doing? My name's Dr. Ken. I'm a YouTuber looking they get my wee wee wet.

gonna hang up. Not very good at flirting. Okay. This is another big one. Excessive intimacy. Okay. Now, what does this mean? I love these terms, by the way,

because I think they're actually quite precise. So this can be invading personal space. Right? So if we think about people who are intimate, what do they do? We share personal space. It's a big part of being intimate. Not even sexual.

It's like, let's cuddle. Let's hold hands. I'm going to sit next to you. Okay. And then this is physical or emotional intensity. Too early. Huge. So trauma dumping falls into this.

Right? When we think about trauma dumping, trauma dumping is over here. Flirting is over here. They don't overlap. Okay? So this is another big one, lack of intelligence. One of the best indicators of your intelligence is being able to make somebody else laugh.

But the really interesting thing is that intelligence is not just IQ. It's low effort conversation. And you guys who have been on the apps probably know what I'm talking about. One of the most annoying, frustrating things on the planet is when someone's like, yeah, no, yeah, no. What kind of stuff do you like to do? Stuff. What are you up to today? Stuff.

Yeah. Okay. What kind of food do you like? Good food. What kind of food do you not like? Bad food. And it's like this is like, this is the fucking ruins. There's no flirtation.

This thing again. Flortation, low effort conversation. Okay. So failing to demonstrate mental engagement is the key factor of low intelligence. failure to demonstrate mental engagement, right? And if we think about flirting, what is like flirting? Like what feels good when you flirt? When someone's into you, they're like tuned in, making you laugh, responding to your signals,

paying attention, leaning forward, smiling, teasing, right? All of those styles have involvement, except for, I suppose, the polite style, which is like a very specific lack of, a very involved un-involvement. I'm looking everywhere but you. You haven't looked at me all night. It has taken every fiber of my being to look away. For seeing you sweeps me away into a world where I

lose my control and I can no longer be a gentleman. And I would never, I could never deflower you, but I can't get you out of my mind. Right? A very like intentional unengagement. pining and yearning. Hell yeah, dude, that's what I'm talking about. Okay? So here's the challenge with this as being burnt out and checked out.

See, if you're burnt out and you're on the apps and you're not able to mentally engage, you're really shooting yourself in the foot. I'm not saying that it's your fault that you're burnt out, right? That's what's really hard. This is another one of these things where, like, I think this is why we have so much loneliness and so much lack of like romantic connection, because some of the things that are not required, but some of the things that are really we've evolved to do

to help us form connections, the world we live in makes it really hard to do. Demonstrate exclusive interest. Stay mentally engaged. Okay? Then we're going to, I'm going to kind of speed run the others. We'll just go through them here, okay? Because these are less important, but from a minute.

effect size standpoint. Okay? So narcissism, this is being self-absorbed. So there's one version of narcissism that I think a lot of people like, so being self-absorbed, being arrogant, not attractive when it comes to flirtation. Being a bad listener is the key modifiable thing in narcissism. And the word that makes me think about narcissism and flirtation that will really destroy any kind of sexual tension that you've got building is actually. Actually, that's not how arc space. X is actually, actually. When you like correct someone with your brilliant view, don't do that if you're on a date, right?

Offer your understanding. Yeah, brilliant. Don't be a Redditor on a date. If you're talking to someone that you're trying to flirt with, don't correct them and demonstrate your knowledge. This is like a key thing. intelligence is not demonstrated by knowing more than the other person. Intelligence is demonstrated by making them laugh, making them feel comfortable.

That's the key sign of intellect, okay? Engagement is the key sign of intellect, not correcting someone. So these are kind of like, you know, while flirting can't be reduced to a rule, just like, in chess, there are some opening moves that are just like really bad. I've never seen a chess opening. Maybe I'm wrong. But you know, the pawns that are by the rooks, I'm going to move that guy forward one square.

Using the word actually on a date is the example of is like that. Correlated to moving the rooks pawn one square. It's like, what is that? It just does nothing. Okay. Next thing. Lack of humor or low self-esteem is huge. So being excessively self-deprecating, not good for flirting.

Being stingy, another really, really important part that people don't like. So stinginess is not just financial. It is also like stinginess with your time. Stinginess is not just money, right? It's just being withholding of your resources. that can include time. And it just really turns people off. Like people don't like it when you're stingy.

Because remember, what is flirting? Flirting is our way to try to gauge what a relationship with this person will look like. And if someone is stingy from the get-go, am I more likely or less likely to engage in that relationship? Here's the really interesting thing. Different views is also on here. These are like religious views, political views, things like that. But they're not like, I mean, they can be deal breakers, but there's a lot of other stuff that people can, it's modifiable. Right.

So you don't have to like change religion. You can still have your religion, have different views. It'll be a challenge for you to overcome in the relationship. But like focus on slimy approach, bad hygiene, expressing genuine interest. These are worth way more. Okay. Now, so perceived effectiveness or flirtation tactics, the effects of sex mating context and individual differences in U.S. and Norwegian samples. We found that sexual availability cues were judged more effective when employed by women in short-term mating contacts, right?

So signaling high sexuality and a flirtation is more successful in short-term stuff. friendly contact such as hugs or kissing on the cheek was not. So this is why people kind of get friends owned. Okay, so hugs and kissing on the cheek aren't necessarily indicative of romantic interest if performed by the woman. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. Cues to generosity and commitment by men and in long-term contexts, sorry, were judged more effective when employed by men in long-term mating contexts. humor was more effective when used by men in long-term contexts and least effective when used by women in short-term contexts. However, laughing or giggling at someone's jokes was an effective flirtation tactic for both sexes.

Okay. So, what is doing something right look like? Let's make sure I'm not forgetting someone. Okay. So good flirting is when you're paying attention, when you're engaged, when your exclusive interest is on this person. You are generous and you can make them laugh. Giggling, great for flirting. You don't have to tell jokes. Once you're starting to tell jokes and making them laugh repeatedly, you become a comedian. But giggling is great. Most importantly, it is matching this.

energy. Are they playful? Then you be playful. Are they looking away? Then you look away. But you keep looking back and looking away, looking back, looking away. Right? There are some exceptions to this. If they have very low self-esteem, you may need to signal highly. But generally speaking, being generous, being engaged, and making them laugh are like the three best things that you can do. And that is all under the backdrop of the most important thing about flirting is playing, it's like playing a game of tennis, right? I'm going to hit the ball across the net and you're going to hit it back and then I'm going to hit it back. I'm going to hit it back.

It is absolutely ambiguous, which is part of the point. And then there's a slow escalation with plausible deniability. Right? When I'm asking a coworker out on a date, I don't ask them out on, I don't just start holding their hand. It's like, hey, do you want to grab a drink? Do you want to invite other people? Sure, we can invite other people. Signal that I wasn't, it wasn't, I hadn't made a decision about that, but I'm happy to.

I'm willing to do things your way. Hey, do you want to grab a bite? Right? When it's clear that everybody else is leaving. And then here's the other thing about flirting. Actually, this is so important. I can't believe I forgot it. Safety.

Flirting is all about safety. So even if you look at like courtship dances from animals, no one is pinned down anywhere. Right? So a big part of flirtation, the other person has to feel safe. So they have to have an exit strategy. There must be plausible deniability. This is why a lot of women don't like being asked out at a place that they are forced to go to, or men, for that matter.

It makes it really, really awkward. Now I can't escape from this situation. Right? So if you want to flirt with someone, give them an exit strategy. That's huge. Plausible deniability is what allows flirting to progress. in a safe manner, right? I should be able to extract myself at any point.

And if we look at the deal breakers of flirting, excessive intimacy, excessive aggressiveness, slimyness, right? I want to show you guys an example of this. I just saw this. Let me see if I can pull this up. Okay, so here's a really good example of slimy. And I want you all to pay attention to the rounds of back and forth.

I just canceled a date with a man like 15 minutes before I was supposed to be on the date. And you can tell me if you think I was wrong for this. So some context, I live on the beach and by my house there's like a boardwalk type of situation. I was walking my dog on the boardwalk. This other guy walking his dog, our dog say hi to each other. My dog is being a menace as he does. He's jumping all over this guy's dog.

But this guy's dog is huge. So it's kind of funny. We end up talking for like, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes. He's like a very good looking guy, very funny, very charismatic. And in this conversation, he asked for my number. I give him my number. That was like two days ago. And then yesterday he texted me, asked if I wanted to get a drink tonight.

I said, sure. He was like, can you do five? I'm like, no, I have plans with my friend, but I could do like 630. He sent me two places. Like we were like chatting a little bit. Right. You go see the escalation. So in the course of planning the state, which is we're going to drinks, I mentioned to him.

I'm like also, FYI, like, I don't really drink, but like I'm down to get a mocktail or like a little appetizer. And like not that she's signaling availability. But I've had guys be so weird if they ask me on a drink state. and then I get a mock tail, that it's just like almost not worth it to me to not say anything and have a guy be insane. So I say that. He's like, yeah, no problem. It'll be fun. He texts me like a half hour before a date and he's like, hey, just FYI, I'm running like 10 minutes late. I was walking the dog. The dog got like fixated on something and delayed me. Literally no problem. I text me back.

I'm like, oh my gosh, been there, all good. Okay. So let's just understand, right? So attractive dude, dogs get along, good communicator, right? Gives options, respects her space, lets her know hey, I'm running late. The dog had a problem, right? So, like, this is attractive, handsome man who's good at talking, escalating. We're going to chat for a little bit. Can I get your number? We text back and forth. We're setting up a date. He responds. See you soon. Excited to get you drunk on a school night. I reply. I'm like, ha ha. Like I said, I don't drink. He says, we'll see about that with a winky face. Already annoying, but I'm like, let me not jump to conclusions. He's probably just trying to be

funny. And I said, I'm sure you're just joking, but really, I'm not going to drink. And he says, like I said, I'll change your mind. To which I responded, I just want to make sure that this is a joke and we're doing a bit. And he said, I'm very convincing. Trust me, you'll have more fun if you have a drink. Immediately no. I said, if you're serious, I don't think we should go out anymore. Have a good night.

And he said, okay, bet. Hello? So I want you all to notice. See, this is how flirting works, right? So he makes a joke and she's like, she gives him an out. right ha ha i'm sure you're joking and then he doubles down and then she's like hey i don't think you're really understanding so she's giving multiple exits for the guy and he's not taking him right but this is what like i i like this example i mean it's kind of scary but i like this example because a lot

of people think that if you were attractive you use dog walking stratt which which you chat figured out right use dog walking stratt oh like hey if you want to pick up chicks just watch your dog. And like, that's a good way. The reason that walking dog walking strata is so strong is it gives you an opportunity for, for interaction with plausible deniability and no pressure. That's why it's so strong. It's such a great strat. But the moment that this guy crosses over into pushiness, it's a deal breaker. And I was like preparing this lecture and three days ago, this thing, this TikTok comes across my, my feet. Right? It's like, it's such a great example of a dude who is checking all of the boxes.

And then this engages in this deal breaker. And I've seen this time and time and time again, even when it comes to successful relationships, the people who do this well are the people who end up in relationships. And the people who do it poorly are the ones who end up getting canceled on 15 minutes ahead of time because they're not respecting someone's boundaries. And this is what I sort of don't like about boundaries for a second. Yeah, because we'll say like, oh, like this person to respect your boundaries. Yes, that's correct. But the whole point of this lecture is that it is way more than that, right? Because there are women who are going to be like, or dudes who are going to be this way. We're going to be like, attention to me tonight.

I'm so fucking sick of this shit. Touch a boob, buy a drink. I mean, it's like very fucking simple. Right? And so then the problem is, okay, on the one hand, you have people like this. And then on the other hand, you have people like that. So how do you know what to do? Flirting is literally, everyone's trying to answer, ask the question, what do I do, what do I do? Flirting is literally a skill set of diagnosis and intervention. You don't know, there isn't a rule for what to do. I mean, I've laid out the rules as best as I think we can. I'm sure that someone can do it better, but whatever. Right, that's the whole point. Is that flirting, knowing what to do, do is not something you learn from a video. It is something that you learn from a person. And there is a skill set of things, ways to engage with that. It's about play. It's about potential space. It is about, hey, I don't know what this is, and that's not a problem. That is a potential. That's what flirting's about. Questions. We're going to post, let's post slido links.

We're going to take questions. Okay, hold on. We have something to show y'all. And Kabeer is tech teller is going to help us out. So, do tech teller is so high maintenance chat? I know, right? Okay. We have a really good problem, which is that you all have lots of questions, and we have lots of answers. We literally have six years worth. F? Okay, so far, so good. Stutters, frozen. Try, try refreshing. Good now. Yeah, I think it's the Discord. Okay, that's really interesting. We just figured it out. Because we had this problem last time, too. Okay, so I'm going to just go through this. So we have a good problem, which is that there's a lot of questions, and we have a lot of answers. So we get this all the time, where, like, we just get the same questions over and over and over again. And we have over, I think, a thousand videos on our YouTube channel now. So, and a lot of people will ask questions to AI, okay? Yeah, 32% of people using AI tools at least once a week in a typical week for mental health support.

So extend a daily interactions with AI chatbots can reinforce negative psychosocial outcomes such as decrease socialization. AIs can be sycophantic. We can become dependent on them. When responses match users' views, they're more likely to be preferred by both humans and preference models, even when wrong. So the AI is biased towards telling you what you want to hear as opposed to telling you what's correct. And AIs offer pretty untailored advice. I know many of them will tailor things to what you say, but they'll always sort of be sycophantic. And they basically have a shared knowledge base, right?

So they may tailor things to you in a sycophantic way, but their knowledge base is basically shared. And by the way, I guess we had this understanding the perception of online video platforms on mental health literacy, a comparison of Healthy GMA G&A YouTube channels. Okay, so we're going to, we have an AI, okay? So what it is is a way to sequence H.E. content to your specific question, pull out the most relevant learnings from thousands of hours of content, and then it's basically trained off of our transcripts. It's not a therapist, coach, or crisis service. Okay? So it's about finding

specific information that you need searches across, hold on a second. So basically, it's going to find the information to answer your question. Okay? So, and it has limited follow-up questions and interactions to reduce sycophancy independence, but it basically searches our content. So I'm going to ask, we're going to just pick a couple of questions, okay, while we're waiting for this. So I noticed, so let's ask about, um,

The difference between yoga and tantra. Let's see. Okay. And while we're doing this, let's see. Oh, the build in public. Whoops. This is our, whoops. This is the overlay I should have been using.

Okay. So, so this is like based on, you know, what we talked about. So, and then it has sources and specific timestamps. Okay? Let's see. Can you explain the Puaer Eternus meditation, meditative approach? Right.

So if you ask this question, I encourage you all to ask these questions to like Claude or Chat GPT and look at the Gemini Deepseek, take your pick. Right? So let's see if it can figure out some of this stuff in its thinking. Did we break it? Let's see. Oh, questions.

Right? So, like, this is sweet, y'all. Right? So avoids dreary work the approaches

focuses on the psychological principle that unrealized potential is not neutral. If the potential is not manifested in a reality,

it transmutes into toxicity, such as addiction, dopamine chasing, or unhealthy lifestyle. To counter this, Dr.

K suggests a specific meditative strategy. Hell yeah, dude. Let's go. right? So this is great. Let's look at there are other questions. Can you give me some, how can I be more productive if I'm depressed? Let's see. Let's see. New chat. Okay. So basically this is a way for you all to ask questions and then, you know, get an indexed version of what we advocate for here at HG. It's an

alpha. Right? So we build stuff. And by the way, so, you know, like this is a good example of something that when you guys support us financially, like this is what we do with the money. Okay. So to be productive when you're depressed, you need to shift your understanding of how productivity works.

In a depressed state, your brain's behavioral inhibition system is hyperactive, making you physically and mentally stuck. Action leads to hope, not vice versa. Focus on unrelated small wins. Prepare for mental punishment. Like, so a paradox of depression is that when you finally do something productive, your mind often punishes you for it. You might think I only did one dish.

I still have 20 more. Or I should have done this weeks ago. Right? So be prepared for this stuff. And then here's timestamps from all of our resources. Okay? It is an alpha. This is what we are building for you all, amongst other things.

Okay? And, yeah, let's see. Let me see. Okay, let me check in. I got to just do something real quick. Chat. Man, I'm juggling some of the things. Yeah.

Okay. So I'm going to turn to Slydo. And, you know, by the way, So we do have, this is great. So thank you guys. By the way, it looks like we've had about 20 sales over the course of this. Thank you guys so much. We really appreciate it.

If you all are interested, so if you guys like today's lecture, you all should definitely check out the guide. So, you know, the lecture is actually a bigger version of what we have in the guide. The guide is designed to give you kind of the highest, most important points with a sufficient amount of nuance. okay and then covers a lot of stuff um so if you guys are kind of thinking okay what happens after flirting um how do i how do what's the right way to express sexual interest right all those kinds of things is what we are try to answer in the guide giving you solid evidence-based

perspectives even though the video on flirting we didn't talk about this much but So the other thing about the guide is it's designed to be useful for everybody at every stage of the relationship, which is what made it challenging to make, but I think we did it. So you may ask, like, okay, what's the point of flirting if I'm already in a committed relationship? And that's where we get to things like dead bedroom. Right. So when this intimacy is missing, when this vibrancy is missing, when you're tuned out, when you are burnt out, when you're not giving someone your exclusive attention because you're playing, wow, for 24 hours a week, there was a post about this a couple days ago on our subreddit.

That's what leads to the loss of intimacy. And there are things like, you know, people will talk about love languages, but love languages is a useful framework, but it's not based on research. I don't know if you guys, like, know that. But it was basically, I think, a pastor who did a lot of, like, couples work, and it was what he sort of learned from his personal work. which I mean I think it's a good framework I think he's not you know it's not bad but it's not evidence-based and so we try to include a lot of things not just about so just to

highlight this hold on a second I'm having trouble logging something sorry okay we'll get slide of questions real soon So we still have a $5 pre-order, by the way. So basically, we tried to figure out all of the steps of the relationship, give you all solid evidence-based perspectives. You know, we go into a lot of these things about why dating is hard. And once we understand why it's hard, okay, exclusive interest is one of the three major deal breakers for flirtation.

And the standard has become lack of exclusive interest. So how do you navigate that? At the beginning, you have to know that, right? And so this is where it's like, if you were to ask me, okay, Dr. Kay, how do I navigate that? When you are texting someone, you express a lot of interest in their personhood, even if you're texting other people. If you're texting other people, instead of using it as a defensive ego kind of move of like, yeah, like, I'm not super interested in this. You can text other people. I'm going to text other people.

That's fine. right? You may ask someone, hey, are you texting other people? What is that? That's an expression of, hey, what's the exclusivity here? Is there exclusive interest? So my hope is that it's not like do these 10 things and then you will end up in a relationship. It is, hey, if you want to understand how to flirt, here's what we're going to teach you. If you want to understand how to have early relationship touch, here's what we're going to teach you. If you have dead bedroom, here's what we're going to teach you. If you're having trouble with communication, here's what we're going to teach you. Okay? And so our hope is when I was literally thinking about what is the largest mental health impact we can make, this year it is helping y'all enter into healthy relationships. Okay. I can't access Slydo. Oh, maybe this will work. Okay, I got it.

Worked. Saved. Okay. Let's take a look. Can you buy me a drink? Let me see. That's the most of voted question is, can you buy me a drink? Let me think about that.

What a great question. What a great question. I'm stumped, chat. I'm genuinely stumped. I'm genuinely stumped. Genuinely stumped. I don't know. Let me think.

I feel taken aback. I feel cared for. I feel like I'm channeling my inner Jane Austen with that forwardness. Right? I'm thinking about so many things. Do I want to drink? No. I think the right answer is.

sure, second rounds on me, right? I think it's important for there to be reciprocity chat. And I appreciate the sentiment. Yeah, second rounds on me. Okay, how does one exit gracefully? We flirt, I escalate and ask her out or ask for her number. She politely refuses. Do I keep chatting like nothing happened or do I leave?

What a great question. Okay. there's one huge thing that a lot of people get wrong when it comes to dating and relationships and flirting, which is the value of awkwardness. Everyone hates feeling awkward. Everyone is like, be confident, bro. Be confident, bro. Come on, bro.

Don't be awkward. Awkwardness is amazing. Awkwardness is such a strong empathic signal. So let me ask you all a question. When I ask you out and you politely refuse and then I feel and express awkwardness, what does that indicate? What is awkwardness a signal of? What do you all think? It's embarrassment.

Okay? Multiple people, I find it cute when a guy is all awkward around me. Awkwardness is cute. Discomfort, right? Discomfort, genuine interest. Empathy, right? So this is what's really important. Awkwardness is my way of showing that I know that I did something that wasn't okay. I asked you out. Now I signal to you. You said no, and now I feel bad.

It is my way of acknowledging that I may have overstepped. Like, it's huge. It's caring. It's showing that I care. It is such a positive signal. And literally, like, if you guys look at all these, so there are people in chat, men, women, I'm not sure, who are like, hey, I think awkwardness is actually kind of cute. And then you watch all these like, you know, slice of life animas where everyone's like, awkwardness is the way that you express interest. Awkwardness is such a strong empathic signal. Oh, I'm bad. I overstep. Now I'm embarrassed. I shouldn't have done that. Right? Oh, I thought this was a date. I brought you flowers. Now I feel like an idiot. It is me signaling to you that I know I made a mistake. Such a huge positive signal in relationships. I've worked with so many people who have gotten divorced. And a huge part of it is we watch this a Manosphere documentary, right? I'm sorry is not in the vocabulary. How many of y'all want a relationship with someone who's never going to say I'm sorry? With someone who's never going to express.

that they're sorry. Never be aware that they're sorry. Awkwardness is actually the easiest signal to send to someone that, hey, I know I overstepped. Maybe I did something wrong. Right. And this is where the flirtation is really important because you're like, oh, my bad, right? Now I feel, now this is awkward. Okay. And then this, oh, that's you still hitting the ball across the net. And then they can hit it back. Oh, no, it's really not a big deal. And why is it a big deal? It's not a big deal because you were awkward. Because you made it awkward. Oh, my bad, I made it awkward. Right? So this is, so the right thing to do is to be awkward. And like, awkwardness is like, it's a signal to somebody else. And then, you know, and then, you know, I think it then what you do this, and now you're

asking me like, okay, if they move pawn to Bishop's Rook 4, then what? And it's like, well, that depends on the board state. Right? If you ask someone, it's okay to be awkward and you can just say, hey, I'm sorry if I made things awkward. Um, I hope you have a good day. And, you know, like, like, it's okay for it to be awkward and then you can kind of walk away. And then depending on what the circumstances, you know, you can, I think it just depends on the circumstance. So if you're like in a work situation, you ask someone out on a date or like you're in a class, let's say, you ask someone out of a date and they say no, you're like, okay, well, this is a little bit awkward. But thank you for, you know, thank you for, thanks for letting me know where you're at.

I'm going to do my best not to make this more awkward than it is. Like that's what I would do. Like literally, and even like, it's not just say those words, it's that. That affect, right? Hey, this is awkward. Smile. You're like, hey, I'm going to do my best not to make this awkward tomorrow. Sorry about that. And then you walk away.

Right. And so that affect indicates it's awkward. I'm embarrassed. I know it's kind of, it may be awkward. I'm going to, you know, and then like depending on how you want to play it, like there can even be an element of like the next day if you see them, you can be like, it's good to see again. Awkward.

Or you can even be like, look, I'm, you know, I hope we can still chat without it being an issue. You can say that. I think it kind of depends on the situation, though, whether this is work, whether this is school. But I think, you know, gracefully exiting is actually ungracefully exiting. Right? You don't want to be like gracefully exit. I mean, you can, if that's your style and that's what you can embody. But I think sending an awkward signal here is really, really, really, really positive strong signal.

It's like, it's good to be like, okay, this is a bit awkward. Yeah. I think you want to be positive affectively. So don't be like resentful. Don't be angry. It's going to be a little bit awkward. That's okay. And then I think like if you're seeing them again, I think just moving things back down to the previous safe level.

Right. So giving them a quick nod or waving, right? If you sit next to them every day, I would even consider like if they're, you know, if you're sitting next to them in class, because this shit happened to me when I was in college. I'd still sit next to them. And I'd be like, look, is it cool if we still, if I, if we still sit together? I want to ask you out again, promise.

Right. Hand motion, palming, smiling, indicating non, and indicating safety, right, indicating, hey, like, I read your signal. I'm not going to ask you out, but hey, is it okay if we still sit together, asking for permission. And they're not going to say no. But then it's important for you to return the interaction back to, you know, what it was, which is like not flirtatious. And then the other option is that, you know, let's say like you kind of come in and then like you sit down someone and they choose to sit somewhere else. That's the signal, right?

They're signaling distance. You're going to respect that distance. Okay. You should move on. Hell yeah, you should move on. Okay. So after you ask someone out and they say no, and you indicate awkwardness, should you move on? Absolutely.

But, oh my God. I got to let you all in on a little secret. You should move on, but you should be fucking prepared for them to not. Okay? That's what's so hard about this. If you ask someone out and they turn you down and it's awkward and you signal that awkwardness, that is such a positive signal. that you should be prepared for the less than 10% chance

that this is something that actually indicates your quality is a potential mate. You're gaining points by being awkward in respecting their boundaries. Okay? And this is what's so confusing. This is why we made the guide. Because attraction, chemistry, mate eligibility,

flirtation, these are all. discrete things. Charisma. Attraction is in the other person. What everyone is entitled to be attracted to who they're attracted to. It has nothing to do with you. They are attracted to whatever they're attracted to. Charisma is in here. Charisma is an aura that you project. It's on your character sheet. Right. So the differentiation between all these concepts is really important. This is what's so confusing for people, right? I asked them out. They said no, and now we're in this weird, like, I thought we weren't a thing, and now they're

like being flirty. Like, what the fuck is going on? It's so confusing, except it's not if you understand it, that if you ask someone out, and they say no, and you feel awkward, and you respect their boundaries, and you indicate that you understand empathically what's going on, that actually increases your attractiveness in most people's eyes, right? It is extremely confusing. You are correct.

and it makes sense if you understand what's going on. And that's the problem. See, this is what we all have to understand. There's nothing confusing about human behavior. There's only ignorance about human behavior, right? There's only ignorance of understanding how the mind works. And so once you understand how the mind works, once you understand, okay, there are five flirtatious styles. And one of the flirtatious styles is actually not flirting at all.

People are sending mixed signals. That's only confusing if you don't understand that mixed signals is the default state. Like, think about this for a second. Everyone's like, oh my God, there's something mixed signals. Like what? Think about your own mind. You have so many mixed signals in your head. I want to drink another cup of coffee.

Then I'm going to stay up too late. Coffee or not coffee. I want to really go to the gym today. I want to play Monster Hunter Stories 3 today. Conflict, no conflict. Mix signals is the default state. Don't get messed up about mixed signals. Learn how to navigate them.

I don't know how to enter this relationship because this person doesn't know what they want. Yeah, default state of humanity. We don't know what we want. We want this. The problem is, actually, we sort of know what we want. Here's the challenge. We know what we want.

We're just not willing to pay the price to get it most of the time. So then do we really want it? Do we want, do I want a million dollars? Sure. Am I willing to work to get a million dollars? Eh, who knows? So when it comes to relationships, people are conflicted. You being comfortable with that, and even this is like fucking Trump card here, okay?

Which is like you helping someone navigate through that, you demonstrating that if they don't know what they want, you getting frustrated and walking away, which can be useful. But as opposed to, look, I understand that you're, like, I can see that you're conflicted about this. Right? That I can see that we have something here that feels genuine, but I'm Hindu and you're Muslim. This is challenging. You want kids? I don't. You want kids. You don't want kids. Right? I can see this must be instead of you getting really bent out of shape, like being a person that can be supportive through that.

And then also communicating your needs clearly, which is like, look, I understand this is hard for you. you. Like, let's have a conversation about it. And then you also letting them know, look, this is where I am, where I think you're an amazing person. But I think that this is where, you know, we got to figure out if there's a potential here or not. Right. So this is where like mixed signals are the default. Don't get bent out of shape. Just learn how to read them. Help somebody else resolve their mixed signals. And then you're going to be in great shape. It's awesome. Great question. Okay. Yeah, Monster is great. Oh my God. As someone with autism, I'm getting epiphanies every other minute from this. Thank you. Any advice specific to neurodivergence and specifically autistic individuals? So when I was putting this together, I was like, oh, man, people with autism, this is why they have it so hard. This is why they have it so hard.

Flirting is such a fundamental part of engaging in a relationship. And if we look at, so neurodivergence is a spectrum. right, but if we look at where the neurodivergent deficits lie, nonverbal communication, empathy, reading social situations, right? So the people that I've worked with who are neurodivergent, see, this is what's really scary. When you are on the spectrum or neurodivergent, you are blind to some of the things that people who are neurotypical take for granted in terms of social interactions. Literally, like, when somebody else feels awkward, right, we have this empathic circuits of our brain that then make

us feel awkward. We literally feel what they feel. If you're neurodivergent, you don't have that sense. You may be able to cultivate it. And so then what happens is people who are neurodivergent, since they're like they don't have this sense, they start to develop rules. Right? We start to develop rules. Okay, if this person gives you, if person gives you gift, you give them gift. Give them gift of equal or higher value. If person says, I love you, you say I love you back.

If you love someone, you tell them you love them. That is the rule. Mom loves me. She says she loves me. Dad says he loves me. he loves me. Mom tells dad that she loves him. Dad tells mom that, okay, if love equal true, then say, I love you.

So there's this rules-based thinking. And then you enter the dating world where it is about abstractions. It is about potential space. It is about play. It is about ambiguity. The nature of the thing is ambiguity. And I was like, oh, this is why all of my patients who are neurodivergent have so much difficulty in relationships. Because it is by its nature ambiguous.

That's what it's supposed to be. Right? It's kind of like trying to figure out like, oh, my God, looking for the wetness and fire. It's like it just isn't there. It's fire. It's not water. It's like these are two completely different things. That's why it's so hard.

At the same time, what I think is awesome about this is that we can put. whole, we can look at all these studies, we can pull some things out. Don't call them females. Focus on hygiene. Really important. Right? There are levers that you can pull. And I'm not going to say that, and this is the tragedy of like doing my job is like,

you know, we want to say that like if you've got autism, it balances out somewhere. We want to think in terms of like character creation where you have like 40 points to distribute. And it's like, okay, I'm going to select the autism gene. And that gives me an extra five points that I can put into the programming gene, right? And I think there are advantages to having some degree of ADHD. Subclinical ADHD may help you if you're a streamer. But I've worked with people who have like crippling ADHD.

That's not an advantage. And I wish I could say with confidence, yeah, if you're autistic, you have some advantage over here. And there's some evidence that, you know, there are advantages to have. having autism. You know, there's a really interesting question I had some time ago. Really fascinating. If you guys want to understand, you know, something about autism, I started wondering, as a tangent, by the way, why isn't everyone a genius? Kind of weird, right? Like, if you look at like the strength of a tiger or a leopard, Like every leopard is hella strong.

Why isn't every human hellas smart? Why didn't evolution just select for like a 180 IQ instead of like a 100 IQ? What's the deal? And the reason is because the smarter that you get, there are some disadvantages that come with it. So people who are smarter are more prone to depression. The severity of their depression is more severe, a greater severity of depression, greater amount of depression, turns out that there is a balance between IQ and EQ. If you look at people who are the top 1 to 5% of IQ, they earn on average less money than people who are in the top 10% of IQ.

So as you start to get really, really, really high IQ, for many human beings, it comes at a cost, which is why everyone isn't a genius. And then we look at something like the autism spectrum. And there are some cases of things like autistic savants. I remember if you guys have, you know, the big short, I don't know if they covered this in the movie or not, but, you know, in the book, the guy who basically figured out what was going on at the subprime mortgage market was a radiologist who was on the spectrum, who then started doing finance. Right? So there may be, there's a lot of concrete, and this is the problem is that in autism, there's

concrete thinking. There's difficulty with abstraction. We like rules. We need rules. We need order. And love is something that is by its nature more disordered. It is more empathic. It is more emotional. It doesn't subscribe to rules, except that it does. But it's not like chess, right? So it's not like you can do this every single time and it works. That's where you have to understand the chess theory, which people with autism can do. So when we built the guide, I was literally thinking about a half dozen patients who I had been unsuccessful at helping. Because I didn't know this stuff, right? When I was there a psychiatrist and they're like a college student at Northeastern

University or Boston University or Harvard or MIT or whatever, a lot of people with autism. And they were like, hey, Dr. Kay, I'm having trouble, you know, finding a relationship. I feel like terrible. They have depression. The depression is really bad. We're working on their self-esteem. And it's like, okay, let's try to see if we can help. you find a relationship. And I couldn't do that because I didn't know this stuff. Right. They don't

teach you in med school, hey, here are the 10 features that make people that are deal breakers and flirting. Don't be slimy. Be generous. Right. And there are a couple of things that, you know, being generous is sometimes challenging for people on the spectrum. Not that they aren't, don't have generous souls, but they prescribe or they subscribe to a rigid, order of propriety when it comes to the exchange of goods and services. There's a lot of rigidity around that for many of these people. Right. So then you have to grapple with that a little bit.

In your heart, you're generous. But there are certain rules of who pays and gifts and things like that. And so realizing that gap is hopefully what will be helpful. And part of the reason I put together these lectures is because if you're on the spectrum, right, someone was saying like, this is every moment has been eye opening. Yeah, it's just like no one explains this stuff. Because not many people know this stuff. The people who know this stuff are like experts who run labs at like Glasgow or Glasgow.

I don't know how to pronounce it. Right? And there's like somebody else in the Philippines. And that's what we try to do here. We stitch all this stuff together. And even then what I'm offering today is incomplete. Right? It's just a selection of the evidence.

But I think hopefully it'll help. Okay. I can't call. Okay. I'm going to. I mean, the advice specifically. to autistic individuals, I think it's not specific to y'all, although there may be, it'd be interesting. I wonder if there are studies about specifically like autism and flirting.

But the whole point of organizing things in this way is to help y'all, right? It's to help you you all understand, okay, what are the rules? And then I'd have to see, I mean, we can look into it, but I'll really have to see. Hold on a second. Let's just look. Autism flirting. Yeah, I mean, so it looks like there's a lot of stuff that, you know, are you flirting with me?

Autistic traits, theory of mind. I can see it. I cannot see it in their eyes. Renegotiating neurotypical romance. This is ProQuest. This may be a dissertation, dude. Sometimes we find a dissertation, and that is lit. Okay, so it looks like there's some,

evidence of inappropriate dating behaviors. This is great. This is a thesis. Oh, I love thesees, dude. Everyone's like, oh, like, New England Journal of Medicine and like, oh, like, let's find, let's find, like, the highest impact journal. No, dude, I learn so, dude, I read PhD dissertations. They're amazing.

Because, like, some dude is like, okay, I'm going to learn everything. Because they don't know anything. They're PhD students. So they start at the very beginning. They explain the most basic stuff. Their background section is like 40 pages. So if you want to learn something, read a dissertation. Really good.

Man, I see there's so much back and forth. Okay, is there a way for autistic individuals to get the rules more naturally instead of intellectualizing them? So I'm going to go ahead and say no. So I think the challenge with autism is that you have to understand that intellectualizing is natural. What we call more natural, more empathic, like, you know, is there a way for a blind person to see? it's not quite that severe. The answer is no.

Right? So I think that's where recognizing that you're intellectualizing, recognizing the shortcomings of intellectualizing, and then adapting using intellectualization, that there aren't rules for everything. There's one rule, which is that there isn't a rule for everything. Understanding that so that you don't get bent out of shape trying to figure out a rule that isn't,

understanding that flirting is fundamentally ambiguous is huge. Right? And lean into your, strengths. And there is some amount of stuff that can be done. Like theory of mind is really important. You know, learning the rules of empathy, cognitive empathy is a decent substitute for emotional empathy. And then I think what I've seen from, thankfully, many of my patients who are in relationships with people who are neurodivergent or are neurodivergent is that someone can still love you if you're on the spectrum. Neutypical people engage in relationships.

relationships with neuro-atypical people all the time. And it's just about them understanding what your challenges are and accepting you in spite of those. And oftentimes, like, effort is the most important thing, right? So are you, like, trying? And then sometimes it's rough. Like, it's bump, it's bumpy road. But I mean, I've seen it work and I haven't given up hope. And we try to reduce things to kind of an intellectual perspective here. That's why we present research. Here's the 10 factors that work. Being generous, making somebody laugh. right, not saying actually, not correcting people when they're wrong. Like, that one can be hard, right?

It's okay for them to be wrong. What difference does it make? Think about their experience. That's a concrete, you have a concrete piece of advice. If you're on a date with someone and they get something wrong, let it slide. What is the point of the date? Is it to correct them about Elon Musk's involvement in SpaceX and when it happened? or is it about having a good time?

Right? So that kind of cognitive flexibility I've absolutely worked on with people. Okay? Okay. Great question. How do I act on availability signals if I can't notice them?

Start paying attention. Right? So some of it is understanding what an availability signal is. Let's talk about noticing for a second. How do you notice? So quick backdrop, for those of you all that missed it. The research on flirting shows that the first thing that happens in a heteronormative interaction

is that a woman signals availability. That's why we have wedding rings or the absence of wedding rings. Signal availability. So then we have to understand, so then once they signal availability, then it's sort of inviting a man to approach. So what if you don't notice them? Two things you can do. first of all, what do they look like?

Is she looking at you? Is she smiling at you? Right? Does she have a wedding ring? Does she seem occupied? Or is she noticing you? Eye contact is huge. Multiple rounds of eye contact can sometimes be an indicator of availability.

So look for it, right? If you think somebody's cute, look at them and then have them, you know, they'll look at you. You guys do that thing where you'll see that people are looking. eye contact do a couple of rounds of that then you can even do something like the this is i like this one right the raising the glass what does that mean chat when someone when you're at a bar and someone goes like this what does that mean let's see if y'all can get it right it is no no no no no see this is so good this is so good it means cheers it means cheers right so it is so it is a vague, positive signal.

Dude, when I'm out and I see a dude, raise a glass, bro, to the bros. And bro raises a glass back. We know exactly what we mean. This is, I see you. Positive. Positive. Positive. That's all it means.

Right? And so after, if you raise a glass, then you're opening the door for them to either look away, like, or. they will raise it in return. Okay? And if they raise it in return, you know, then you can do something else. Like you pay attention to it being empty

as their drink gets its way down. You kind of make eye contact and you're like, I'm going to go to the bar. Do you want one? A second? Go like this. An offer. That's when they're like, nah, bra.

Or they give you a thumbs up. Then you have the signal. Right? Dude, talk about really. missing tips for a 5-5-5 guy, these are the tips for a 5-foot-5 guy. Like, height doesn't enter the picture. This is exactly what you do. Is the likelihood that they respond going to be a little bit lower because you're 5-5

if you're 6-5 5-s, sure. Absolutely. But this doesn't change the fundamental game. That's the whole point. See, this is what someone's asking, how do you do that without the bar? Guys, this is what I'm saying. It's not don't follow the chess moves. follow the chess theory.

What is the equivalent of that in class? Right? It's just, you can still do a nod. Then you can do a wave, right? And like, like, this is where it's like, you walk, you know, if you see someone in the hallway, you nod. Next day you see him, fist bump, right? Like, you escalate the interaction. That's the key thing.

You escalate plausible deniability, low risk behavior. based on their response, you escalate a little bit at a time, you give them the opportunity to escape. That is flirting in a nutshell. Doesn't matter if you're 5-5, doesn't matter if you're 6-5. Doesn't matter. Okay? Height doesn't enter the picture, a great pun.

Right? And this is also, in the guide, we talk about a lot of different dimensions. So height is important for initial physical attractiveness. It's not an indicator of long-term mate selection. right? For some people it may be, but like generally speaking, financial security, empathic connection, things like that, those are all, thank you. What is this? Oh, this smells caffeinated. I don't know if I, okay, thank you. Sure. See, I almost screwed up there. She brought me something nice and I was like, I don't want to drink this caffeine. It's going to make me tired. I'm not doing

afternoon caffeine anymore. But that would be a dick move. So you drink it, now it sits here. Undrink. It's delicious. I don't want it, but you make me want it. Is she flirting? It's not, I can't tell. Fuck me. I really, I really don't know. Yeah. Right. So this is this person was saying, you make me want it. Right. I don't want it, but you make me want it. That's flirting, chat. That's like you see how I didn't even know if she's flirting But that's the reflex You gotta be witty dude

You gotta think on your feet Let's go Okay Yeah Okay Okay How do you in an ideal way Turn a man down gently

If he does flirt If not interested So that we can get out of The systemic cycle Of them feeling defeated Or is it as pointless To try They may feel defeated anyway

And that's okay Oh my God See we need more human beings On the planet like this How do I turn a dude down without messing up his self-esteem, without making him feel super rejected. Right?

So this is beautiful. If more human beings on the planet thought like this, we would not, the world would not exist in this way. Notice the empathy. Notice the theory of mind, the mentalization. There are so many people I've worked with who, the callousness of the people around, them is what really messes up their life.

Leads to resentment, depression, feeling pathetic. And it's interesting how little it takes. A human being sometimes just needs one human being in their life who is not callous, who's maybe not part of their nuclear family. Like you need one teacher to care. That's all you need between failing out and going to jail and our early life of criminality. One teacher is all it takes to be like, look, I know you're better. than this. I've seen that happen. Sometimes we as psychiatrists will do that, but that gets tricky

because it's not really our job. And the problem is that when we see the value in other people, they're like, you're just saying that because you're my psychiatrist. So that's challenging. But it's such a great question. So I think a lot of this once again is affect, is posture is body language. Someone asks you out. It's all about the way you respond. I'm flattered. You just made my day. Right. Receive it positively. I'm in a relationship, but man, you just made my day. Truly, I'm flattered. Right. And this is where it's about the energy. Because like sometimes you can, I mean, if you want to, you can pilot something like, you know, you're going to make someone happy one day.

It feels a little off to me, but I think it's a strong, affective oomph. I'm flattered, you made my day. You know, or, I mean, I'm not having, I'm not having the ability to channel it right now. So like this also, there's, oh, maybe we should do a video about this. Channeling the right affect. Let me get a note about that. This is good. Right.

How do you channel the right emotion at the right time? And I think there's like there's a, there's a world where there's like a really big grin, right? Which is like, thank you so much for asking. I'm in a relationship, but man, just made my day. And like someone can't, you're saying no. But like when that's the facial expression, right? Like it's hard for someone to walk away from that and be like, oh my God, I'm a loser. And what you're indicating to them is that there isn't something fundamentally wrong with them that is causing you to say no.

Is venting a good way to flirt? No. No, venting is not a good way to flirt. Remember, this is one of the factors, chat. Excessive intimacy can be venting. So sometimes when we vent, vent is kind of interesting because it can facilitate the formation of a bond. this really is delicious, but it interferes with my evening meditation. But alas.

What do I do if the other person thinks you're flirting, but you're just being friendly? I feel so guilty. This is another great point. Right? So this happens all the time where you're being friendly, someone else interprets it as flirting or romantic interest. And what I found is a big part of that, then you feel bad. Because you're like, oh, man, now I'm like leading.

Oh, my God. I've got a thing on my forehead. Still there. By the way, you guys didn't notice. You guys know what that is? Can y'all guess? Can you guys guess? What was that?

Lipstick. But why? Marking. Very good. Very good. A signal that you're taken. That's not flirting. She doesn't plaster

lipstick on my forehead when the two of us are interacting. You guys get that? Yeah, she owns me. Sign of dominance. Yeah, I don't know about dominance. Dominance towards that signal isn't for me. I can't even see it.

That signal is for you. You guys get that? Like, you guys see how natural it is? Yeah. So I never noticed. That's okay. And that's what needs to change. noticing

noticing is the most important skill that we have right I think Jung said it's until you make the unconscious conscious I forget exactly what it is you'll think your choices are destiny or something like that conscious unconscious

what's the quote from Jung until you make the conscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it destiny okay yeah I've I've I've forgotten the quote five times. Laffy Bun. I know. I keep on, it's a brain fart. Okay. All right. So what do you do if you're flirting or if you're just being friendly and somebody else thinks you're

flirting? Then you feel guilty. Okay. So a couple things to keep in mind. The first is this is a feature, not a bug. Right? So the whole point of flirtation is that it is ambiguous. So it will oftentimes get misinterpreted. The other thing that I've known, noticed is that someone is more likely to interpret friendliness as flirting, the more starved they are. So I've noticed that when I work with people who are emotionally starved, they think about all of their emotional needs coming from one person. So my best friend, is my business partner, is my lover, all of the things happen in you, right? You are the fulfillment of all of my dreams. Everything that is wrong in my life will be fixed if only I can be with you. You're everything that I've always wanted.

Oh my God, I'm so deeply in love with you. And we just met one minute ago, one hour ago. We had this deep conversation in anime convention and oh my God, I can't get her out of my mind. And she's everything. If I can have her, everything will be great. So that kind of energy is coming from the person. So it's okay for you to feel guilty, but understand that they're misreading the situation, there's an element of that that you control, and then there's an element of that that you don't control. And we see this sometimes like, I run into this because people are like, oh, my God, I have to work with Dr. Kay. Dr. Kay is the only one who can save me.

Look, I'm great. I am. What can I say? Guilty is charged. But I think a lot of that is projection, right? A lot of that is like this idea that, okay, like I need this, like I need something like amazing. Something amazing. And then I receive that projection.

That projection is layered on. I'm an ordinary guy, y'all. My psychiatrist had good training, worked pretty hard, pretty present. Right, but I'm not like some miracle worker. I'm like a psychiatrist who I would say, fingers crossed top 25%. of psychiatrists. Top 25th percentile. Top 50, I would hope.

A lot of bad psychiatrists out there. I think I'm safely in the top half. But maybe not. Maybe it's psychiatrists who think they're in the top half that actually wind up in the bottom half. Number one risk factor for being in the bottom half of psychiatrists thinking you're in the top half. You don't know.

This is projection. Right? So when someone, sometimes they will project onto you, or sometimes they will be so starved for kindness, so starved for compassion or friendship, they're missing so much that once you give them something, they think you're it all. And this is where if they think that you're flirting, you know, this is where you can sort of, that's why there's some dance back and forth. Flirting is basically like a mating dance. That's literally what it is. Where they're like, oh, like, I thought you were into me and you

be like, no, I was, I was being friendly, right? But then there's also a couple of behaviors. This is what's kind of interesting. I mean, I've worked with a lot of people who, a lot of people think they're flirting. Like several people in your life may think that you're flirting with them. And that's because you engage in some of the behaviors that are very flirtatious. Like, when I was in high school, there was a girl in my class who sat.

So we have desks, right? So I'm sitting in my chair with the desk in front of me. like a one piece kind of thing. She sat on the desk behind me and put her hand on my back. And I was like, what are you doing? Right. She signaled something. I signaled, hey, I'm not comfortable with that.

And then she never did it again. I'm sure she was mortified. I wasn't paying attention then. I'm still not paying attention. I don't know when flirting is happening in front of my face, which is the irony. But no, it's not. Holy shit. Oh, my God.

You guys are trolling me for not knowing what flirting is. Dude, flirting is missed. It is only correctly detected 24% of the time. 76% of the time it has missed. Let's go. Not an idiot after all. Get it? It's cool.

We didn't know. Is it flirting? I don't know. Marking territory. That I know. It's the moment I saw the lipstick. I know what that is. That shit was freshly applied, chat.

Okay? That was freshly applied. Okay? So, but what do you do? I think you can gently let them, hey, like, I see you like a friend. Actually, I would not use those terms. Actually, don't say that because that triggers this whole friend's own complex. So let me think about this.

What's the right way that doesn't trigger a friend's own complex? So one thing, first thing is, are you being flirtatious? Right? Are you, because, I mean, people are, like, raised in different ways. So some people are very, like, physically affectionate. And this is where I think an important part is, oh, okay, okay, hold on, on, I'm figuring this out. I'm thinking, applying.

And Dr. Kay's internal AI is working. So I think first thing is you can probably assess someone's... So question number one is, how starved are they for any kind of affection? So if you believe they're starved, this is something that you should be more thoughtful of. Second thing is, what is their flirtatious style? Right? So are these people that are very touchy or not very touchy? If they're not very touchy and you are touchy, then there is a greater chance that they will perceive this as flirtation as opposed to friendliness.

Does that kind of make sense? It's all about these templates. We talked about the five styles of flirting. So if you're like a very like physical kind of person and touch and, you know, invading people's personal space is like not that big of a deal. Like I remember many years ago, I was at a, anyway. this girl sat on my lap once. And I let her stay there, but I was like, it just seemed, it was strange. I didn't, but I was like, no, this is not flirtation.

I think that's just how she is. But in retrospect, that sounds fucking dumb. But anyway, like, we were friends. And then many years ago, she sat on my lap, which was just strange. But it's ambiguous. Okay? Yeah, so going back to this question, so I think you've got to assess their how starved they are, number one. Second thing is assess like how they interact with you and match that kind of interaction.

And third thing is if they express feelings for you, I think sort of, you know, letting them know that you don't see them that way. This is triggering friend zone. Friendzone trauma.exe. And then I think another interesting thing, I don't know if this is actually a good idea or not, one thing that I think would be interesting is what did I do that gave you that impression? You know, asking them, maybe this is a hard conversation, but like asking them to articulate, trying to understand. I'd be like, I really want to understand because that wasn't my intention.

I really value you as a person, and I didn't mean to lead you on. Is there something in particular that I did that made you feel like I was interested in you? But I think that's the hard how to have the balls to flirt. This is a great question. Okay, here's how you have the balls to flirt. Good question. So remember, flirting includes plausible deniability. That's what flirting is.

That's the key feature. It's ambiguous. So how do you have the balls to flirt? You flirt and you're not flirting. On the inside you're flirting, but on the outside, it has to have plausible deniability. Excuse me, officer. Is there any way that I can take care of the ticket right here?

Do I have to pay on the website or can I just pay you? Right? Plausible deniability. You're not going for the bribe. Plausible deniability. That's how you flirt. That's literally how you flirt, right? Because then there isn't a sense of rejection.

Hey, you want to come over and watch this episode of whatever? There's a new season of Love is Blind. Like you're talking about it at work. Like, hey, you want to hang out? Watch the season finale. Watch the reunion. Is that a date? They don't know.

You don't know either. Then, how do they show up? How do you show up? They show up, dressed up. You are in PJs. Right? There's a lot of signaling. Oh, that's.

Brilliant. Sin 4-4-4-1. I'm not flirting unless you like it. That is the summary. That is a beautiful summary. That's the way you flirt. I'm not flirting. Unless you're into it.

Flirting? This isn't flirting. Do you like it, though? Do you want more? Right? And even like that energy. Like, that's really, bro. That's part of my flirting technique is like whipping out the accents and like positive affect.

Laughing, right? Is that sexy? No. Unless you like it. Is it sexy? No. Fuck no. But does someone want more?

Sure. Yeah. You didn't like it. Why did I feel something? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Curry is. Let's go.

Right? Yeah, so this is this is what's also kind of confusing is sometimes people flirt with no intention of a relationship. Like old ladies with cancer would flirt with me all the time in the hospital. This is a good question. Women in chat. Would this work? Let's get women in chat. But why only women?

Yeah. So I think a good example of really cringe flirting that works really well is actually Michael Scott and Holly on the office. right? It's about matching the energy. So like when I say the cringe accent, right, if I'm like talking to a girl and then she whips out the cringe accent, oh, ho, you are so, oh my God, my mother would be so happy if we got together. Right? If that's what she comes back with. And then it's like, oh my goodness, I cannot be with you though. My mother would never accept it. Are you a mama's boy? That depends. Are you mama? Like, you know, it's fucking dumb.

It's just back and forth. Okay? Like, right? So, so, I mean, like,

on the one hand, okay, so you guys may be looking at this being like, okay, this is easy. So we all fucking play conversations out in our head, right? And when they're in our head

and I'm playing both sides, I can, you know, it's easy. I can make it easy. Here's the thing. I can turn this shit on with regular people. Yeah, flirting is dumb and funny.

And so this is where oftentimes, you know, when I'm doing this kind of stuff and when you guys do this kind of stuff, there's a joy to flirting that is not about lust. That's actually, it's play, not lust. And this is something that like, you know, I think parts of the Manosphere have completely missed this, that they think about flirting as a means to an end. it is a joy in and of itself to be flirtatious, right? And there's a lot of dudes with like the no-homo flirtation kind of thing. And there's, I think that there's a lot of genuine affection, playfulness of affection

with men even in this way, which I think on the one hand is arguably homophobic, but I think like it's like, it's a way of expressing affection. Right? And no homa is a really good example of like signaling to someone that it's not flirting. It's kind of interesting, actually. Isn't that often just joking around? Yes. So now we're getting there, guys. Isn't it just joking around? Absolutely. So flirting is just joking around with a chance that we're going to later tonight. That's what flirting is. We're just joking around. But there's a, wait, hold on a second. Is he just saying that? That's the goal.

Is there a chance? Right? Is there a chance? And them not knowing is a feature, not a bug. The uncertainty is a feature of it. So I don't know what jokes maxing is, but I think it's a very specific thing. It is an ambiguous signal with plausible deniability

and an expression of interest. Okay? I get anxious from ambiguity. You're not the only one, and that's what makes flirting hard. Right? So now we get to the real rub of like, why is flirting hard?

Because unless we are trained in this, and I kid you guys not, I was trained in this. So I remember when I was growing up, right? So this is like the kind of interaction that some people have growing up and some people don't. And if you didn't have this stuff

kind of happened to you, then you're like, this was really an advantage for me. I realized this many years later when I was becoming a psychiatrist. I was like, oh, this is what was going on. So story time. So I grew up and I was part of this social circle. My parents were part of a social circle with like other Indian Gujarati people. And basically what would happen is every weekend they would get together at somebody's house.

And they would like every weekend somebody else would host. There was like a group of maybe like a dozen families. And they would just rotate through. And there were some traditions like one person would always. host the Super Bowl. You know, one person would always host Christmas, and then, like, someone, everyone would host, you know, a different time. And basically what happened is, like, the women would be in the kitchen cooking, and the men would be in the garage drinking, which is just what happened. And then as the night went, then we would all just be playing. Like, all the kids

would be playing, we'd be playing basketball, running around, hide and seek, whatever. Like, we were just hanging out, okay? So if you go through, so we're, like, playing outside or whatever, and then you have to like walk through the garage in order to get to the bathroom. So I need to use a bathroom. So I'm walking through the garage. There's a circle of foldable chairs with as the night goes on progressively drunk Indian uncles. And then as the uncles get drunk, they start asking, they like make you uncomfortable. So they start when I was like seven years old, they would ask me, who do you, eh, a look, do you like your mom better or dad better?

Who do you like better? right and then like they're they're purposely trying they're getting drunk so sometimes they would like say things that were really inappropriate and then usually the other uncles are like hey that's out of line right so there was a lot of like internal safety kind of and they ask you questions like you know are you going to be a doctor like your dad right like they just ask like inappropriate like like kind of put you on the spot and so what i had to learn was like there's there's no right answer, right? So if I say dad, they're like, that's right, good boy. Don't let your mom here. Don't. And then if I say my mom, they're like, oh, then they're like, they start trolling my dad. They're like,

you see, he's mama's boy, just like you. So you had to learn how to like dodge. So some uncle asks me, who do you like better, your mom or your dad? And I ask him, who does your son like better? You or his mom? And then everyone starts laughing. I don't answer the question. And it was, it was awkward. I would hate going through that, that garage. Right, clearly I still remember. It was like a little bit traumatic. But also, like, that's how you learn how to deal with being anxious.

They were like training me. You know, typical Indian family. Like, yeah. And so, like, this is where it's kind of challenging, but, you know, a lot of us don't have these kinds of experiences. I realize now how lucky I was that they, like, put me. in uncomfortable situations like twice a night. You're running the gauntlet, right? And it's hard because it is awkward.

And you have to learn how to tolerate that sum. That's why the plausible deniability is so important. Because you have to be able to extract yourself, right? And this is where there's like one other really, really deep, deep knowledge, the secret knowledge of flirting, which is that if you yourself are ambiguous, us, then it becomes a lot easier. See, if you are somewhat detached, hey, let's just show up and have a good time. Let's see what there is. Okay, this girl's here. She's kind of cute. Am I that into her? Let's find out. See, so much of what makes flirting hard is that we are in here one way and we are

trying to be out there another way. The more that you can just align those two things. And that's where the self-work comes in. Right? That's, That's where it's like, okay, maybe I am projecting onto this person. If you have really strong, intense feelings the first time you meet someone, one of two things is going on. Either you're projecting or this is karmic destiny. This is why people will ask, they'll ask me questions, okay? Let's get through a couple of specifics, actually.

You know, should I ask someone out at the gym? And people will say no. Some people will say, well, look, yes, right? Depends on who you ask. So here's my kind of like rule of rule book on this. First of all, they should be able to escape. Okay, so the less possibility of escape is the less you should do it. So oddly enough, you're walking down the street, I think that is better than asking someone out at work.

Because this person will never see you again. Second thing, really make it about them. If you're in Austin, Texas, on 6th Street, walking down the street, partying, and if women are replaceable, to you, that I don't think is the best way to go about it. There are good reasons to do that. Look, if you're just looking to get laid and like somebody else looking to get laid, like, by all means, you all go for it, whatever. That's not what I'm commenting on.

But I think make it about the person. Right. So if there's something specific about them, the more specific you are to them, I think, the better it is. And this is the kind of thing where like sometimes you send a strong signal, but there needs to be a high level of escape. So even if you're like seeing someone, like I remember many years ago, I was like 15 years old, I was at a wedding. And I was playing in a stairwell with some of my friends.

And there was this girl in the stairwell who was playing with her friends, probably about the same age. And I was just struck by her. And then for like the next year or two, I would like think. about her. Like, I didn't know her name. I saw her once. I was like, wow. Like, she just kept on popping up in my mind. They didn't say anything. I was 15. If I was single today, and that kind of thing happened again, and I saw someone for five minutes, I'd be like, hey, I know this is going to sound insane. There's something about you, like, can I get your number? I don't even know what it is. I just, I would love to get to know you a little bit. And then

leave if she says no. Right? But it should be authentic. You can't like do that to like 15 people in a row. I'm not scared of her saying no. I'm scared of her saying yes. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. First high hormonal experience leaves lasting face. Wisdom in chat. Yeah. Can I have your AOL? Absolutely, dude. Can I have your AIM? Not AOL.

AIM, bro. Okay. And then you don't have to be like, ooh-woo about it. Like, if it's in a fucking anime, don't do it. Right? So another element of safety is, is, so people are like, oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed. I want to, like, wait until she's by herself to ask her out.

Don't do that. Ask her out in front of her friends. Safety also includes numbers, right? So you walk up, if this is a girl at a bar with her friends and they're all hanging out, walk up. And if you want to ask her out, ask her out then. Approach her, be like, hey, how are you all doing tonight? Can I buy all around?

Next round's on me. Right? That's so scary. What's scary about it? You know? What about your safety? With what money? My point is that it's a safe situation for them, right?

So the safer it is for them, the more, the less slimy it's going to feel, the less aggressive it's going to feel. Right? So they need to have an exit path. And the simplest exit path is I wasn't really asking you out, right? That's why the plausible deniability is there. That's why the ambiguity is there. Yeah, so the price to hit on one girl in a group is to buy them all around. So don't view this like a chess match.

But think about it for a second. Okay, so let's play this game. So let's say there's a group of girls that are at a bar hanging out. Maybe they're celebrating, I don't know, they're at a bachelorette party. Okay. So if I walk out or you, if a dude walks up and is like, hey, how are you? tonight, you all look amazing. Like, what's going on?

Like, y'all are the best dressed group of women in this place. Right? And then they'll respond. Okay. And here's the cool thing is like there's a good chance that the ones that are unavailable will respond very positively. Right? And then you can ask, hey, can I buy, can I get the, oh, so this, she's getting married.

Well, this is something we got to celebrate. Can I buy all around? Okay. So this is literally pick up culture, fine. What do you all think that indicates? Right? So this is one of those things. I mean, like if we're getting close to pick up culture,

let's remember that there are some things that, I mean, pick up culture exists for a reason, right? They're not wrong about everything. So there's confidence, positive signals. Generosity, remember we talked about the factors. It's generosity. Open, friendliness, safety. Am I saying, I'm going to buy all a drink and then one of y'all has to come home with you?

No, at all. There's no strings attached. Signaling generosity. Signaling to a certain degree, financials to everyone's making comments about how expensive it is, which I can empathize with. I've been broke at points in my life. Okay. Right? And that's different from, and I think this is very different. Like, so, you know, I think there are also been, you know, times in my life where you could go up and you could say, okay, drinks are on me for the rest of the night. That to me feels like a financial flex that is excessive. Being lax with resources, sure. Right. And then there's some amount of like back and forth. So you say next rounds on me, then you get a really important signal. When you all have that drink and you're chatting them up, right? Then the question is,

when your drink finishes, do they offer to reciprocate? Huge important signal. And, and And then what we get to is like, oh my God, I'm trying to think about how to make this more useful. And then I think there's like a certain degree of transparency. So it's like, oh, there's a bachelorette. Fantastic, who's getting married. Oh, my goodness. Tell me about the guy. What does he like?

Oh, my God. Tell me all about him. Right? There's playfulness. And then, okay. So who's single? and who's not? And they're like, why are you asking?

Are you looking to get hitched? And I was like, why are you asking? Are you wondering if I'm looking to get hitched? Right? Back and forth. Is that information very important to you? Right? So there's, you know, right?

So can I sit on your lap? That's a good example of, I think, crossing over into Borish. The whole point is that it's playful. That's the whole point. playful, playful, playful, playful, playful. Flirting is about the other person should leave from the encounter having a good time. And it's not even clear whether I'm straight, whether I'm gay, whether I'm engaged, whether I'm married, whether I'm cheating on somebody, whether I'm looking to date, I don't know, right?

Is Dr. K flirting with his own self? Listen, boys and girls. You guys haven't figured this out. What I share with you all in stream is not stuff that is made up here. it is stuff that has been lived on the outside. Okay? Whether that's video game addiction, whether that's working with patients,

whether that's flirting. Okay. So I don't believe in pickup lines. All right, this is the other thing. Flirting is about witticism. It's about responses. It's about the other person's energy. You don't open up with a pickup line.

You can open up with an open-ended question. Wow, y'all look amazing. Compliment. What are we celebrating? Okay, this is tough. Yes, so is playing League of Legends, Dota, Valerent, or Fortnite, or Minecraft until you do it a while. What do you think about cold approaching? I think I hate the term because it implies a uniformity that I think is bad.

Just walking up to it. There should be a really, see, if you cold approach, it's cold. Cold is bad. if you're going to approach someone, it should not be your number 37 out of 50 that I'm trying to do 50 cold approaches tonight. You're number 37. It's fucking terrible. If you are approaching someone with no context,

it should be because this person, you cannot live with yourself if you missed this opportunity. Right? We're talking, let's go. If you're approaching someone, you better be channeling your internal Jane Austen. That's my take on cold approaches. Yeah, I love this. Oh my God, chat so much hot pursuit. Live in the moment.

Yeah, so sister just got married. He proposed via Dungeons of Dragons. So it's matching people's energy. Right? I don't know how to, I can't give you guys examples. of flirting in D&D because I didn't flirt in D&D. Okay, let's do one more question, and then we're going to wrap for the day.

How to identify your flirting style. Oh, oh, my goodness. I thought you would never ask. This is what I love about this, dude. Oh, my God. You guys ready? Individual differences in the communication of romantic interest. Development of a flirting styles inventory.

I think this paper's in the public domain. Do they have this here? Maybe it's in an appendix. Okay. where this is. But they developed a flirting styles inventory, so I don't know where it is. By the way, okay? Oh, lagging a little bit. Lagging again. Why did we start lagging? Testing. Oh, no. Lag. Something weird is going on. Are we done for the day? No, it's getting better. Better. Saved. Okay. Okay. So, in the guide to love sex and relationships, we are asking you guys to please

surveys. Okay? Here's the cool thing about the surveys that we're asking you to do. It doesn't include this, but what we did, basically, I'm going to tell you all now, we're doing a new thing with the guide, this guide in particular. So we developed this guide because we hope that this will help you improve your relationships. That's why we made it. We collected all this evidence, put it together, synthesized it.

So we want to know if it actually helps. That's what the surveys are. They're outcome measures. Okay. Now, these outcome measures are not just about, they're not just measuring outcomes in terms of progress. They're also assessing you. So this flirting styles inventory is not in there. But there are lots of things about connection, charisma, all this kind of stuff that is in there.

And so we hope, hopefully at some point, you know, to be able to show you guys what your surveys indicate. So you'll be able to learn hopefully about yourself with a certain amount of specificity and granularity that hopefully will be helpful. Okay. So, yeah. And that's why, so this is why we're pushing so hard because the more of y'all that get it, and if you guys opt in, then we have a large sample size. If we have a large sample size, then we can measure change. Right, but if not enough people get it, and people don't opt into surveys and they don't fill out surveys and things like that, then like, then we're not going to have good data. Yeah, there's $5 off.

Okay? And one thing, so, you know, there was someone who posted about, they're like, hey, can I get a refund for the guide? Like, I've watched y'all's YouTube for a couple of years, and I've seen most of this stuff. Not in the gut love sex and relationships, but they were talking about other ones. So, like, the other thing is that when you guys get this stuff, we're, so for example, this, even this thing that we're talking about now, this was built. So we have devs on staff, right? And like, I want to be super clear about this.

A lot of the really amazing stuff, so the accents is me, that nobody else helps with. But a lot of the really amazing stuff that we build is because, you. You guys give us money, and we give you guys hopefully something in return that has a lot of value, right? We don't do like sub-athons and things like that. So a big thing that we moved, we did a, we've done like drives and stuff like that, sub-athons. We've done that in the past, but I just didn't like it. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to build something that hopefully helps people.

And I want to give you guys something. I just don't want to, it's, I don't like begging. It doesn't feel right. Just don't like it. So I'm going to build something that I hope helps you, and I want you guys to get it, and we want to price it in a way where hopefully it's affordable, can be expensive, inflation. And then we're going to turn that money to building things that will hopefully help you more. Okay, so we'd love to hit 7,000 soon if we could.

We're doing really well, and we're grateful for the support. But it's a great question. So I don't know. I mean, hopefully that thing has a flirting style. Let me see if I can find it. Stiles inventory questionnaire. Oh my God, there's just a bunch of

quizzes and stuff. But I mean, I'm sure that Hall published this somewhere. Is there, yeah, maybe there's an appendix somewhere. I don't know. I don't see it here, though. But yeah, we want to equip you all with a lot of this. Okay.

What we're going to do is we're going to try one more time with TechTeller. Let me just make sure that we have. Okay, if we have been friends for a long time and we have been Platonic, how can I assess whether it's appropriate to start flirting or not? There's literally like videos in the guide that address this. So thinking about friend zone, escalating a relationship, things like that. Right?

So we know that's a really common problem. There isn't like a simple answer to it, but we try to, in the the same way that we did today, we try to teach all the principles of what creates, what separates out whether people get into the friend zone versus there can be initial romantic attraction, and then there can be like specific things that lead people to move from being platonic to being romantic. And so those are the kinds of factors that we want to go for. And communication is a huge part.

But I think we're going to try to show y'all. So TechTeller wants to show you all this. We got to show you all this again. Hey. Hey. Okay. All right. I'm not going to stay sure with you, but I want you to just talk over it.

Yeah, talk over. Because TechTeller really wants to explain a couple of things. And these guys have been working on this for a long time. So go ahead. I'm on slide risk to sycophancy. What do you want to? Cool. Yeah. I actually also want to get your feedback after this.

So I mean, this much as a discussion with you as I want to show chat. Sure. So yeah, y'all were really thinking through about how we're wanting to incorporate AI because like we know the risk. Like Dr. K has done that video, many videos, live streams on, yeah, psychosis, things like that. So we have a point of view and we're sort of thinking through the risks and whatnot. So I kind of wanted to go over just what our approaches and what we're doing. I think we went over some of the risks, right? But really the main thing that we saw come up was the dependence piece.

Like we don't want to build something that people become reliant on for emotional support because that's a risk that we've seen. It's sort of highlighted here. The other piece was the sycophancy, like AI doesn't push back and that can lead to all kinds of things. and that study had, I think, an interesting takeaway. And the third thing was the untilatered advice. So sort of what we're doing with that information is we're tailoring and limiting our chatbot in certain ways

that typical AI doesn't. So for example, with sycophancy, we're wanting to reduce the memory, actually, for dependence. We wanted to reduce the amount of memory it has. So it only remembers, like, the last five interactions. It doesn't have any long, our memory to like remember what you talked about five days ago in a different chat. It's just going to remember what you asked it, you know, in your last five interactions.

And it's just going to use that to tailor what content you're looking for. It's all discovery. It's not sort of the, we're really trying hard to de-risk the other stuff. And I think even going back to kind of why we're doing it in the first place, I'm seeing some comments and questions from people asking like why AI, there's so much risk here. it's because you all are using it. So we've seen questions in the community. We've seen in that study,

35% of people using AI tools once a week. And our community, y'all, like us, we're all online, so we're likely doing that even more. And if we're all using it, this is where people are, this is where we are. We want to, as always, meet y'all where we're at, and we want to build something that's better and safer. And so right now what we're doing, this is a test.

We're not fully releasing this. It's only available to Tier 2 members for like a month. So I'll look if you can go to slide 16. Which one is that? And show that. Timeline. Okay. Right towards the end.

Yeah, got it. Yeah. So Mays Alpha test for Tier 2 members. We're going to take that everything we learned in June. Like what are people asking? How are people using? it. We're going to review that. We're also going to review it with our awesome scientific advisory board. And they're going to look through the results. We have a couple of review processes

already in place. We look for accuracy of recommendation, transcription accuracy, whether it's recommending different kinds of things, how much hallucination is coming through, and, you know, a lot of safety features like crisis detection, whatnot. So I'm not saying any of that is perfect, but we're do it's an alpha. So we really wanted to test this before we roll it out fully. And, you know, if it goes well, we want to launch in August. Awesome. How long has this been in the works, TechTeller?

I mean, since AI has been a thing, basically. We started thinking about it since then. And it's only been in the last six to eight months that we were like, okay, we have, we feel good about where we're going after consulting our SAB and, looking through the research and, you know, after you did your videos, that was a big part of it. Okay. So I'll ask again, how long have we been thinking about this? Since 2020, I think.

Yeah. When AI came out. So, so, so I, I just want to really emphasize that. So like, you know, this project has been being built for the last like six to eight months, but we've been evaluating AI use for four years. and this is part of how I think we work here at HG is like, you know, we know there's a lot of stuff going on, but it takes a lot of time and thought. Like, we're not just like, oh, like, you know, when AI, when chat GPT first kind of hit the ground running,

I mean, we got approached by people who are like, hey, we want to build a Dr. K AI chatbot. Here's, you know, what'll happen. You can charge this message for a subscription service and people can basically talk to Dr. K. And so we tend not to just jump at those things. And I think there's a big process behind the stuff being built. Other things that you want to share, TechTeller? Yeah, we're thinking of what to name it. And we wanted to ask you guys, we're calling it the AGIA, which is super unoriginal right now, name TBD.

What do you all think? Should it be Dr. K.I or something else? What do you think, I'll look? I mean, I don't know, man. I'm cognitively drained after streaming for four hours. There none. After flirting for four hours with chat? Yeah. So, you know, I was thinking about this.

Yeah, I think, God, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I think I'm very confident in all this flirting stuff, but I almost want to just take a group of people and teach them how to flirt. You know? Yeah. It's like, I think it's like, we got to just like get out into the world and stuff. But I don't know how that would work. But we'll figure it out.

Another four years, we'll get it. Yeah, it takes us. We still have to do that Thandr stream from our last. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't forgotten chat. For those of y'all that were here years ago with the Thunders stream, it's still on our list. We're going to do it one day.

Okay. Oh, the team is asking me to make a couple of corrections. The guide discount has ended, just by the way. Okay. It ended on the 13th. So it's full price now. Okay. Sepahire, everyone.

Get wrecked to do. And the alpha is now tier two members out there, you know, chat. companthogamor.G., check it out. It'll go on for a month,

and we're looking forward to what you all have to say. All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Guys,

the devs have been working on this for, like, TechTeller said, he's been, I mean, they've been working pretty hard for the better part of a year. But, I mean,

this has been And, you know, I remember seeing a piloted version of this, I want to say, like, close to two years ago, right? And so we tend to do things sometimes, like, kind of low and slow. Even this guide was a couple years in the making. And so, yeah, I mean, hopefully it helps. Thank you guys for coming to stream today. This was fun. It's fun.

I'm kind of done on Fridays. I'm not working tomorrow, which is great. We got to hang out a little bit longer. And huge props to chatters, dude. I think like this whole, you guys have a good way with language. Like, I mean, there was just so many things that I read this message in chat.

I was like, yes, yes, this is flirting. Yeah. No, I'm not flirting with you. Yeah, so there's one thing, you know, one thing I'll leave you all with is, one thing that I haven't used, but I wish I had used and would like to use more is the wink.

right there's the but that's cringe I know it's cringe I've never used it successfully but it's like one of these crazy meta ideas that I'm not willing to let go of all right chat y'all take care

and we'll see y'all next week thanks for joining us today we're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.